Dialog International

Obama Will Be the Nominee, Even Spiegel's Steingart Concedes

Last night Barack Obama decisively moved to clinch the nomination as Democratic candidate for president. It was a game-changer for the pundits, who finally realized that it will be Obama vs. McCain in November.  Even Der Spiegel's Gabor Steingart, one of Obama's biggest detractors in Germany, now admits the truth:

Mit ihrer Niederlage in North Carolina und dem knappen Ergebnis in Indiana ist das Rennen für sie gelaufen. Wenn nicht noch ein Wunder geschieht, ist Barack Obama der Kandidat seiner Partei. Sein Vorsprung ist knapp, aber uneinholbar.Hillary Clinton II. ist weit gegangen. Es wird Zeit, dass sie den Rückweg antritt. (With her loss in N. Caroline and the slim margin of victory in Indiana, the race is over for her. Barring a miracle, Barack Obama is his party's candidate. His lead is small but insurmountable. Hillary Clinton has come a long way. It is time that she back out.)

This is the same Gabor Steingart who has been writing for months that there was no substance to the candidacy of Barack Obama, he had too much bagage, his pastor was a crazy radical, he didn't wear a flag lapel pin, etc.  After Obama's huge Iowa caucus victory in January it was Gabor Steingart who told German readers that Obama's campaign was a fairy tale that was doomed to failure:

Kinder lieben Märchen, weil sich in dieser Erzählform das Wunderbare und die Wirklichkeit vermischen. Das vor Urzeiten Erlebte, von Generation zu Generation weitererzählt und verfremdet, wärmt die kleinen Seelen. Die Leidenschaft für das Märchenhafte bleibt auch im Alter erhalten. Eines der modernen Märchen heißt "Iowa".  (Children love fairy tales, because in this form of narrative the miraculous is mixed up with reality. Experiences of our ancestors are passed along from generation to generation and warm the spirits of small children. The passion for fairy tales lives on even for adults.  One of the modern fairy tales is "Iowa".)

But, as it turns out, it was Steingart himself who was living in a neoconservative fairy tale.  The reality is that Americans are hungry for change, and they have found an inspiriational leader in Senator Barack Obama.

Stupid White Men

I follow the German press coverage of the US presidential campaign and occasionally translate pieces for Watching America. For the most part, the reporting is disappointing: the journalists from the German press often parrot the reporting from the mainstream American press.  In some cases, they simply plagiarize. An example of going along with the mainstream reporting is a piece by Martin Klingst in Die Zeit: DIe Pistole liegt neben der Bibel (The gun is next to the Bible) about the white, working-class men who, we are told, will determine the outcome of the presidential election in November.

We have seen this demographic hype before.  In 2000 it was the "soccer moms" who would decide everything. By 2004 they had become terrified "security moms".  Now, we are told, white men without a college education will pick the next president.

Der männliche weiße Arbeiter, der white blue-collar worker, ist die Schlüsselfigur im amerikanischen Wahlkampf, der große Umworbene, dessen Stimme über den Präsidentschaftskandidaten der Demokraten entscheiden soll und im Herbst über den nächsten US-Präsidenten. (The white male worker - the white blue-collar worker - is the pivotal figure in the next election. He is much-courted, and his vote will decide who will be the next president in the fall.)

So Martin Klingst sets off in pursuit of the "white Joes", who love guns and Jesus but are struggling to support their families in a globalized economy.  These used to be called the "Reagan Democrats" - conservative, white union members who found Ronald Reagan's racial divisiveness appealing.  These are the same folks that Thomas Franks wrote about in his brilliant analysis of politics in Kansas - What's The Matter with Kansas? (2004).  These are the low income residents in the Red States who consistently vote against their economic self-interest due to polarizing social conservative issues cleverly packaged by the Republican Party.

Klingst finds two "white Joes" that fit the paradigm: Ed McMillan in Ohio and Jeff Kruger in South Carolina:

Jeff Kruger aus South Carolina repariert rund um die Uhr Landmaschinen, seine Frau Samantha hat drei Jobs, damit ihre fünf Kinder eine vernünftige Ausbildung erhalten. Wenn es die Zeit erlaubt, besuchen die strenggläubigen Krugers ihre protestantische Kirche dreimal die Woche. Jeffs Hobby ist die Jagd, er besitzt einen ganzen Schrank voller Gewehre und Pistolen. Früher, als alles besser war, legte er oft samstags seine Flinte auf die Ladefläche seines betagten Pick-ups und fuhr in die nahe gelegenen Berge von North Carolina. Ed McMillan besucht in seiner spärlichen Freizeit lieber einen irischen Pub. Auch er besitzt eine Pistole, »zur Selbstverteidigung«. Denn in letzter Zeit wird in der Nachbarschaft viel eingebrochen. Die Pistole liegt auf seinem Nachttisch, gleich neben der Familienbibel. (Jeff Kruger from South Carolina repairs farm equipment day and night, his wife Samantha has three jobs so that their children can get a decent education. When they have the time the devout Krugers attend their Protestant church three times during the week.  Jeff's hobby is hunting and he has a entire cabinet filled with handguns and rifles. In the past, when times were better, he used to toss his shotgun in his old pickup and drive into the surrounding mountains in North Carolina.  Ed McMillan prefers to spend what leisure time he has in an Irish pub. He also owns a handgun - for "self-defense". Because there have been a lot of break-ins in his neighborhood. The gun is on his night table, next to the family Bible.)

From the attitudes of these two men, Klingst extrapolates that Senator Obama doesn't have a chance with this demographic.  Obama is too exotic, and they don't trust a black candidate:

Die Joes, die Ed McMillan und Jeff Kruger heißen, drücken ihr Unbehagen so aus: Der schwarze Senator aus Illinois sei ihnen doch irgendwie sehr, sehr fremd. (The Joes, who have the names Ed McMillan and Jeff Kruger, express their discomfort: they think the black senator from Illinois is really very, very strange.)

This type of "analysis" is really quite silly.  Senator Obama won the primary in Jeff's state quite handily, attracting many white voters.  In Virginia, often cited as a Red State, Obama won the majority of white voters in the Democratic primary. In my state - Maine, one of the poorest, whitest (99% Caucasian) states in the US - Obama won the caucus by a wide margin.  I don't doubt that there a number of racists who will not vote for a black candidate under any circumstance, but the Reagan Democrats no longer exist as a major voting block.  The US has become too diverse, the economic shocks from globalization have been too great, and life has become too precarious for many Americans. They are ready to vote for real change. The idea that there is huge demographic of uneducated, low-income white males who will vote against change as block in November doesn't correspond to today's realities.

An American Christian Democratic Movement?

Mike Huckabee dropped out of the race for president this week after he lost to John McCain in the Texas and Ohio primaries.  This was not unexpected.  What was unexpected was Huckabee's success with many conservative voters.  Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, appealed to voters with his humor and his frank expression of Christian faith.  But it is a different brand of evangelical Christianity than what we have become accustomed to America from the likes of Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and the Religious Right.  Huckabee spoke about his humble beginnings in Arkansas, the poverty he encountered there, the struggles of working people across America.  Government, Huckabee insists, has a duty to help people in need. Furthermore, this is the duty of every Christian.   As governor of Arkansas he actually raised taxes to fund programs that helped poor people in the state.  The Republican establishment was outraged, calling Huckabee a "Christian Socialist".  The establishment Republican doctrine is that taxes (especially for the wealthy) must be cut - always.

President Bush originally came to office with the promise of "Compassionate Conservatism". which in theory appealed to many evangelical Christians.  In practice, however, the Bush White House attempted to mobilize the Christian base by hate-mongering against gays and lesbians, while stepping up anti-abortion rhetoric.  But a new generation of evangelicals have much broader concerns: social and economic justice, torture, stewardship of the environment, pre-emptive wars.  These issues are integral to their faith.  Huckabee tapped into this change among evangelicals:

"Unquestionably there is a maturing that is going on within the evangelical movement. It doesn't mean that evangelicals are any less concerned about traditional families and the sanctity of life. It just means that they also realize that we have real responsibility in areas like disease and hunger and poverty and that these are issues that people of faith have to address."

This brings Huckabee and the new "movement" much closer to the ideologies of the European Christian Democratic parties.  The German CDU (Christian Democratic Union - party of Chancellor Angela Merkel) promotes both private enterprise and the principles of the social economy (Sozialwirtschaft). In its statement of 10 Key Principles, the party combines conservative values with a "Christian view of man".  Can Huckabee take what he began to the next stage and nurture this new approach into a political program aligned with Christian Democrats in Europe?

It will be interesting to see whether these younger, more open-minded evangelicals support John McCain in November.  This week McCain sought and received the endorsement of one of most bigoted representatives of the Religious RIght: Pastor John Hagee.  Hagee is well known for calling the Roman Catholic Church a "Satanic Cult" and for explaining Hurricane Katrina as God's wrath against the "Gay Culture" in New Orleans.  Looks like Republican politics as usual.

Der Spiegel's Steingart Continues His Anti-Obama Smear Campaign

Hillary Clinton won the Ohio and Texas primaries last evening. As predictable as the sun rising in the east, Der Spiegel's Washington correspondent Gabor Steingart ecstatically launched a new attack on her opponent Barack Obama.  Obama's campaign is now under a cloud and voters are now "coming to their senses":

"In der Liebe folgt dem ersten ein zweiter Blick. Auch die Wähler sind keine Hasardeure. Womöglich ist das Wahlergebnis von heute Nacht bereits Zeichen ihrer Ernüchterung. Denn in den vergangenen Tagen fiel ein anderes, ein deutlich fahleres Licht auf Barack Obama."

Steingart then goes on to repeat the most scurrilous charges about Obama and the corrupt Chicago businessman Antoin Rezko - charges which have been investigated by the Chicago Tribune for over a year.  But Steingart goes one step further and mentions the involvement of the Iraqi tycoon with close ties to Saddam Hussein.  So "Hussein" Obama was secretly helping the the Hussein of Baghdad - America's archenemy:

"Unklar ist, ob Rezko ihm seinen irakischen Hintermann, einen Geldgeber aus dem Umfeld von Saddam Hussein, der in der französischen Elf-Affäre zu einer Haftstrafe auf Bewährung verurteilt wurde, beim Besuch in Chicago vorgestellt hat. Er habe daran "keine Erinnerung", sagt Obama."

Well, Steingart does not mention that Barack Obama still has what appears to be an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates.  Last night's results have not changed this. Now that John McCain has secured the Republican vote, Gabor Steingart and his neo-conservative pals in Washington can focus their attacks on Barack Obama.  Well, to quote Steingart's hero: Bring it on!  Let's see what the Senator from Illinois is made of.

Hillary in the Debate: Let's Emulate Germany in Green Manufacturing

I watched last night's debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama which took place in Ohio.  Workers in Ohio have suffered more than in many other states from the loss of manufacturing jobs in the globalized economy.  Both candidates had good ideas for how to create new jobs, but I especially liked Hillary Clinton's proposal, which came near the end of the debate:

"You know, take a country like Germany.  They made a big bet on    solar power.  They have a smaller economy and population than ours.

They've created several hundred thousand new jobs, and these are jobs that can't be outsourced.  These are jobs that have to be done in           Youngstown, in Dayton, in Cincinnati.  These are jobs that we can    create here with the right combination of tax incentives, training,    and a commitment to following through."

Indeed, Germany's eco-industry has become a job creation engine. One third of all the solar cells and half of all the wind turbines worldwide are manufactured in Germany.  The management consultants Roland Berger have estimated that by 2020 more Germans will be employed in green industries than in the automotive and mechanical engineering sectors. Green technology accounted for over 6 billion euros in exports in 2006.

As I wrote in an earlier post on SolarWorld, German green investment in the US already creating new jobs - jobs that cannot be outsourced to India or China.

Die Welt on the McCain Affair: It's Clinton's Fault!

Last evening the New York Times published a damaging article concerning an alleged inappropriate relationship between John McCain and a (considerably younger) female Washington lobbyist.  McCain is well-known in Germany, but has not attracted nearly the attention in the presidential as Barack Obama.  Scanning the German press this morning on the fall-out from the NYTimes article, I came across this over-the-top commentary from the conservative daily Die Welt. Rather than commenting on the substance of the report - that John McCain may have used his office on behalf of a lobbyist with whom he had an intimate relationship - Die Welt attacks former president Bill Clinton:

"Kann denn Liebe Sünde sein? Klar. Und zwar dann, wenn – wie dem Republikaner   John McCain unterstellt wird – ein Politiker mit einer Lobbyistin schläft   und ihrem Klienten dafür einen Gefallen tut.Übrigens auch dann, wenn – wie es der   Demokrat Bill Clinton tat – ein Präsident mit einer abhängig Beschäftigten   oralen Sex hat und sich dadurch nicht nur lächerlich, sondern politisch   angreifbar macht, so dass er seinen eigentlichen Job, das Land zu   verteidigen, vernachlässigt."
(Can love be sinful?  Sure, especially if a politician sleeps with a client and then does a favor - as is alleged with the Republican John McCain.  But also - as we saw with the Democrat Bill Clinton - when a president engages in oral sex with an intern and not only subjects himself to ridicule, but also makes himself politically vunerable, so that he neglects his job: protecting the nation.)

But Die Welt knows what is really behind this investigation by the "left-wing" New York TImes: an advocacy of the "socialist" candidate Barack Obama, and a smear campaign against the "champion of capitalism and freedom" John McCain:

Barack Obama, der   Favorit für die Nominierung der Demokraten, führt einen Wahlkampf mit   antikapitalistischen Parolen, die ihn hier in Deutschland irgendwo zwischen   der SPD und der Linkspartei ansiedeln würden. Hillary Clinton steht ihm   darin kaum nach. Amerika steht im Falle eines Demokraten-Siegs vor einem   Linksruck.John McCain hingegen war immer ein Freund der   Marktwirtschaft und der Deregulierung. Diese Haltung soll nun von der „New   York Times“, der bevorzugten Lektüre der linksliberalen Szene in New York   City, als moralisch anrüchig hingestellt werden. (Barack Obama, the Democratic front-runner, is waging a campaign using ant-capitalist slogans, which in Germany would place him somewhere between the SPD and the LEFT party. Hillary Clinton is not far behind in this orientation. America will shift to the left should the Democrats win.  John McCain on the other hand has always been a friend of the free markets and deregulation. This policy is now being presented as morally reprehensible by the New York Times, the preferred newspaper of the "left-liberal" scene in New York City)

Again, what the "left-wing" New York Times is doing here is a deliberate attempt to undermine the "kapitalistische Demokratie". I wonder how Die Welt will react if it turns out that McCain did indeed block legislation in return for sexual favors - but that's the essence of free-market democracy.

Flashback: Die Welt has always been on the side of democracy, even if it means defending torture. 

 

America Needs Real Gun Control

The tragic shooting of students at a lecture last week at Northern Illinois University was just the latest in what is now practically a weekly occurrence. Once again, a mentally disturbed individual easily acquired an array of deadly handguns. And it was completely legal. 

Guns are such an integral part of American culture that most Americans are resigned that horrific episodes - such as the Virginia Tech massacre - are simply a fact of life. And yet polls show that two thirds of Americans support further restrictions on gun ownership.

So great is the power of the gun ownership advocates (especially the National Rifle Association) that our political leadership refuses to touch the issue.  Rudy Giuliani pushed through some tough gun control legislation when he was mayor of New York, but became a born again gun advocate during his aborted run for the US presidency.  Even the white shoe investment banker Mitt Romney had to pretend to be a avid gun owner in order to pander to the powerful gun lobby.  The lack of leadership by the Democratic candidates is also bitterly disappointing to those of us who would like to see a sane gun policy in the US.  Derrick Z Jackson writes in today's Boston Globe:

"But neither Obama nor Clinton, the Democratic nominees for president, have done "whatever it takes" to let us know how they would employ their common sense in the nation, which has the highest rate of gun deaths in the developed world....As Clinton talks realism and Obama talks common sense, the senseless killings continue, aided tremendously by the American access to guns. It is fine to be on the side of sportsmen. It is also time to show presidential leadership in protecting the American people at the mall, town hall, and school."

Germany has perhaps the most comprehensive gun laws in Europe, and gun violence is just a small fraction of that in the United States. Of course, even the most restrictive laws cannot prevent senseless violence: in April 2002 a young student in Erfurt shot his high school teachers to death.  But the reaction to this horrific event is instructive.  In the US, gun enthusiasts always put forward the idea that all teachers and students should carry concealed weapons - the more guns, the safer we all are (even though all data suggests the exact opposite).  After the Erfurt tragedy, Germany pushed through even tighter restrictions.  Prospective gun owners now have to undergo a psychological evaluation.  Under German laws, the shooters at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois Univ. never would have been able to acquire guns.

UPDATE: Europe can be smug concerning the gun violence in the US, but Europeans profit handsomely by the proliferation of weapons in America. Read Europes Lucrative Gun Trade with American.

The Stupidity of Gabor Steingart

News Flash: Obama Wins Virginia. Obama siegt in Virginia.

Readers of Der Spiegel turn to the US correspondent Gabor Steingart for information about politics in the United States. After all, Steingart is based in Washington DC and knows what is really going on behind the scenes.  Gabor Steingart is the expert.

This is what Herr Steingart has been telling the German reading public: The End of the Obama Revolution

"The euphoria is gone, the friendly fire has started: Barack Obama is suddenly looking less like a superstar and more like just another candidate. His message isn't hitting home with the three most important groups of voters: women, older Americans and blue-collar workers.

 

 

REUTERS

Is the dream over for Obama?

All of those people who've been dreaming of America's first black president now have to slowly wake up. It'll happen one day, hopefully, but not in this election. And perhaps his name will be Barack Obama. But that first black president will have a more mature personality than that which Obama, 46, can offer American voters today."

And that is just ONE of Steingart's many articles which reported on the collapse of Obama candidacy.
I worked for the Obama campaign in Maine, which is 98% white and "blue collar" with 80% of the voters with income of under $50,000.  Barack Obama carried the Maine Democratic Caucus by a huge margin.  In my town, the voting was delayed for 2 hours because of the surge of first-time voters, independent voters, and even Republican voters, who wanted to register as Democrats so they could vote for ....Barack Obama.

Steingart would be much better off reporting over at the Washington Times - the neocon daily owned by cult-leader Sun Myong Moon.

Der Spiegel Cover Story: Barack Obama

Unfortunately, the Web site does not carry the print edition's cover story and it is impossible to find the magazine up here on the rocky coast of Maine.  So I'll have to read what my blogger colleagues in Germany have to say about the issue.

The title - Der Messias-Factor (The Messiah-Factor) - makes me very skeptical.  Americans' enthusiasm for Senator Obama is not because of some irrational faith in a Messiah.  Rather, Barack Obama is the best political talent to come along in a generation.

If the article was written by Gabor Steingart, then I fear it is nothing more than a hatchet job.  But I look forward to reading the issue, when/if I can get my hands on it.

UPDATE: Reader AB was kind enough to send me the article.  It is actually pretty good - NOT written by Steingart, but rather by Klaus Brinkbäumer and Marc Hujer.  It does repeat some of the demographic misinformation that the US media propagate - that Obama only appeals to affluent white males and African Americans.  The results yesterday in "white" states Nebraska and Washington - where he won in every county - show that he has broad support across all gender, racial, age, and income groups. The article does get to the heart of Senator Obama's enormous appeal to many Americans: he personifies the promise of a better America:

Beweist Barack Obama, der schwarze
Demokrat, der hier zu Hause ist, hier in
Chicago, hier in dieser Kirche, nicht gerade
das Gegenteil? Sieht in diesen Wochen
nicht die ganze Welt dabei zu, wie ein anderes
Amerika entsteht? Ein friedliches,
gütiges, mitfühlendes? Die Völker in Europa,
in Asien warten auf so ein Amerika,
eines, das nicht immer sofort zu militärischen
Interventionen greift, das wieder
zuhören kann und seine Gäste willkommen
heißt, ein Amerika, das die Vereinten
Nationen ernst nehmen und vielleicht sogar
stützen wird, das Multilateralismus
schon aus Eigeninteresse anstrebt.
Und wird das nicht ein Amerika sein, in
dem endlich wirklich ein jeder werden
kann, was er werden will? In dem alle
krankenversichert sind, Migranten willkommen,
Lehrer gut bezahlt, in dem Rüstungsetats
für Forschungsfinanzierung umgewidmet
werden und die Schlaglöcher der
South Side wieder zu Straßen?

So I recommend this article. As reader Archilocos points out in the comments below, the issue also contains an extended interview with John McCain.  I'll post my thoughts on this later...

Patriotism and "Heimatliebe

Yesterday I watched Mitt Romney's lame speech as he announced his decision to drop out of the presidential race. Mitt declared that he "loved America" and had to sacrifice his presidential ambitions for the "good of the country, while it is at war".  If the opposing party would win, it would represent a "surrender to the terrorists" - implying that the Democrats hated America and are unpatriotic.

Patriotism is a sickness in America. It has infected every aspect of the national discourse, and has resulted in a disastrous, unnecessary war. Our commonwealth is threatened by a $600 billion military budget - dwarfing the combined defense budgets of all other countries in the world, while our nation's infrastructure collapses and our schools are starved. Patriotism is a cancer on America's soul.

Nicola Woolcock, writing in the London TImes, urges that children NOT be taught patriotism in British schools:

Patriotism should be avoided in school lessons because British history is “morally ambiguous”, a leading educational body recommends.

History and citizenship lessons should stick to the bare facts rather than encouraging loyalty to Britain when covering subjects such as the Second World War or the British Empire, the Institute of Education researchers said. Teachers should not instill pride in what they consider great moments of British history, as more shameful episodes could be downplayed or excluded.[...]

“Countries are morally ambiguous entities: they are what they are by virtue of their histories.”

The authors added: “It is hard to think of a national history free from the blights of warmongering, imperialism, tyranny, injustice, slavery and subjugation, or a national identity forged without recourse to exclusionary and xenophobic stereotypes.”

I think Kurt Tucholsky had it right in his essay Heimat where he wrote about the difference between Patriotism and Heimatliebe ("Love of the Homeland"). The "Patriots", Tucholsky wrote, are militarists, who will bring only destruction to the nation:

Sie reißen den Mund auf und rufen: »Im Namen Deutschlands ...!« Sie rufen: »Wir lieben dieses Land, nur wir lieben es.« Es ist nicht wahr. (They (the Patriots) shout "In the name of Germany....!" They shout "We love this country, we are the only ones." It is not true.)

But for Tucholsky, it is those who raise critical voices, who reject patriotism, who truly love the Homeland:

Wir haben das Recht, Deutschland zu hassen — weil wir es lieben. Man hat uns zu berücksichtigen, wenn man von Deutschland spricht, uns: Kommunisten, junge Sozialisten, Pazifisten, Freiheitliebende aller Grade; man hat uns mitzudenken, wenn »Deutschland« gedacht wird ... wie einfach, so zu tun, als bestehe Deutschland nur aus den nationalen Verbänden. Deutschland ist ein gespaltenes Land. Ein Teil von ihm sind wir.“We have the right to hate Germany, because we love it. When speaking of Germany, we should be taken into account: we, Communists, young socialists, pacifists, freedom-lover of all kinds… How easy it is to pretend as Germany is composed only of the national associations. Germany is a divided country. We are part of It”.

But it was the "Patriots" who drove Kurt Tucholsky from the country he loved. He was driven to suicide a thousand miles from his Heimat. And the "Patriots" went on to destroy their own nation, and much of Europe as well.