Although I have been too busy to post regularly on this blog (you all miss me terribly, right?), I’ve still been taking a great interest in political news and following the presidential race especially closely. So I thought I’d share a few thoughts on the overall state of the race, and give a few of my predictions.

Why Obama Will Win

I’m heartened by the fact that Barack Obama is leading in the popular vote tallies, even as the race in the battleground states appears to be tightening. But I’m not taking these polls seriously. I’ve been disappointed before when Kerry, Gore, and Dukakis led in the summer opinion polls only to see the Republican pull ahead in the fall. It’s quite possible that 2008 will have a similar dynamic.

I still expect Obama to pull off a victory, and quite possibly an electoral college landslide. If that happens, it will be for two reasons: first, the electorate is focused on domestic policy; second, Obama manages to neutralize voters’ concerns about his ability to be commander-in-chief.

My own experience of how I came to support Obama over Hillary Clinton seems instructive. Last year, I viewed both candidates as excellent overall, but each with significant flaws. It took me quite a while (more than a year, in fact) for Obama to clinch the deal and win my vote. It was only when push came to shove (the Washington state primary loomed) that I decided.

I know that most American voters pay far less attention to politics than I do, so I don’t expect them to warm up to a newcomer overnight. John McCain enjoys an advantage right now because he’s more familiar and has far more experience on the national scene.

Obama’s biggest electability problem has been well-known even before Clinton made “ready on day one” her mantra. Obama is a junior Senator who ran for the presidency with only a couple of years in the Senate. The media hype, fawning fans, and celebrity testimonials have contributed to the feeling (however unjustified) that he’s more style than substance.

My decision to support Obama over the more seasoned Clinton was agonizing. I felt that Clinton, for all her inauthenticity and her poorly managed campaign, was more than acceptable. She was the “safer” choice, and I deeply resented Obama’s decision to run for president in 2008 (instead of paying his dues and running in 2012 or 2016). How could he ask me to roll the dice and have faith that he could succeed at the most difficult job in the world? Luckily, I changed my heart and turned out not to be too cynical.

Now the opinion polls tell us that voters feel that McCain is “safer”, Obama is “riskier”. By nearly a 2:1 margin they feel McCain would be the stronger commander-in-chief. Basically Obama has yet to seal the deal.

But this isn’t such bad news when you consider that many voters won’t really be tuning on the campaign until the fall. By then, Obama will be a much more familiar face and images of him looking very presidential on his overseas tour will have changed many perceptions. Obama has a big job to do, but every day he continues to justify our faith in his superb competence and skills. He’s got plenty of time to succeed, even if the race gets even closer.

Why McCain Will Lose

Like most Americans, I have residual warm feelings about the John McCain who ran for president in 2000. He seemed the authentic maverick, a rare Republican who put his own ideals above party interest and often spoke uncomfortable truths (even if this image was partially manufactured by unduly biased media coverage). Now it seems this McCain is missing in action.

What an enormous disappointment his campaign has been! He has proven to be an underwhelming manager of a terrible campaign, bankrupting it twice and turning over its management team faster than a McDonald’s restaurant changes employees. He has repeatedly made alarmingly intemperate statements that paint his opponents and all who dare challenge him as unpatriotic traitors. He has flip-flopped on many issues in order to appeal to the right wing of his party. His reputation for “straight talk” is indelibly damaged.

Finally, he has made serious gaffes so often that I’ve become genuinely worried that he is not in sufficient command of his faculties to be qualified for the presidency. To put it bluntly, he’s past his prime. The more Americans see of him, the more they will conclude he’s too old for the job. I’m not being ageist. Maybe there’s a vigorous 71-year-old who’s up for it, but McCain’s not the one.

Perhaps McCain’s greatest failure has been his unwillingness to spell out his “vision thing”. Surely he will try to remedy this by urging some kind of Renew America’s Greatness theme at the Republican convention. I’m betting this effort won’t be enough for McCain to turn his campaign around. But who knows? If McCain’s surrogates and “shadow campaign” succeed in painting Obama as untrustworthy and therefore too risky, then he may yet pull off an upset.

Who Obama Will Choose as V-P

The most important decision Obama must make between now and November will be whether or not to select a vice presidential nominee who will be perceived to “beef up” the ticket’s foreign policy credentials. If he selects Joe Biden, Chuck Hagel, Sam Nunn, or Wesley Clark, there will be no doubt that Obama is trying to cover his weakness on foreign affairs. This might soothe the fears of swing voters and neutralize McCain’s strong suit, but it also might shift public attention away from domestic affairs onto foreign affairs. If Obama plays the game on McCain’s favored territory, he’ll be sorry.

I think the ideal candidate for Obama is one who is immediately perceived as a credible commander-in-chief, but who is not primarily known for his or her foreign policy strengths. Joe Biden could almost meet this hurdle, but he is so strongly identified with foreign affairs expertise that the media spotlight would probably turn too much away from domestic policy. Who could help Obama overcome his perceived “experience” deficit while still accenting his domestic policy strengths?

Among all the major names floated for vice president, I see only two candidates who can fit this bill: Hillary Clinton and Evan Bayh. Tough-as-nails Clinton is widely seen as possessing the knowledgeability and cool temperament to be commander-in-chief, but her passion is undoubtedly domestic affairs. Bayh, the two-term Indiana Governor, has impeccable executive experience. And he has a moderate reputation (former Chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council) and years of experience on the Armed Services and Intelligence committees.

If Obama’s decision comes down to Clinton or Bayh, the smart better should go with Bayh. Clinton’s many negatives are well-known (most importantly, her unpopularity with swing voters). But Bayh seems to have all the right mix of attributes: he’s telegenic, he has a national reputation, he has experience winning votes in red states, he hails from the Midwest and could help in Ohio and Michigan (even if Indiana is a lost cause), and he actually seems to want the job of vice president.

Bayh’s most important asset: he’s boring. When he’s partnered with a rock star presidential nominee, his blandness would help to give the ticket just the right temperament. Obama is the quintessential fiery Leo. Bayh is the quintessential earthy Capricorn. An earth sign veep grounds fire in a good way. Hey, if the astrology symbolism seems to fit, I’ll roll with it.

Who McCain Will Choose as V-P

I’m sorry, but I just can’t get excited about this question. If you can picture McCain as the GOP’s Snow White … (see, that wasn’t so hard, was it?) … guess who Pawlenty, Huckabee, Romney, Lieberman, Ridge, Palin, and Jindal are?

If I were a gambler, I wouldn’t place a bet. But what the hell, I’ll guess McCain goes with Florida Governor Charlie Crist. Crist has fans across the political spectrum, he hails from a swing state that McCain badly needs to win, his age and executive experience nicely complement McCain’s, and he seems to genuinely want the job.

I also imagine that McCain places a tremendous value on rewarding loyalty. Because loyalty is honorable and noble, of course, just the qualities McCain thinks of himself possessing. McCain owes his Florida victory to Crist’s timely endorsement, and he owes his primary victory largely to his campaign’s momentum coming out of the Florida contest. In the end, he’ll reward his “king-maker”.

Crist may seal McCain’s Florida vote, but he is unlikely to be a game changer. I can’t see that he’ll cost McCain any votes, though, unless some unflattering news comes prancing “out of the closet”, if you get my drift.

Postscript

I’m from Seattle. Locally, there are two very important concerns on the ballot for November that I know of; however, there hasn’t been much to watch closely yet.

The first issue is the Governor’s race, which is going to be a squeaker. In 2004, Christine Gregoire beat Dino Rossi by only 192 votes. Recent polls show the race tied (again) between the incumbent Democrat and the Republican nominee. Anti-Dino ads have been running nonstop for weeks. I think Gregoire will probably lose a very close race, a victim of the strong anti-incumbent mood in the state. But that’s no reason not to work for her election!

The second local issue is Sound Transit 2, a proposal that will expand the light rail system to the suburbs by raising the state sales tax from 6.5 to 7.0 percent. It looks like the smartest transit proposal that King County has seen in the last few years (since voters killed the monorail boondoggle), but I would bet the measure fails. Last year’s transit package got voted down, and voters are unlikely to raise sales taxes when they’re already concerned about the economy.

P.P.S.

I’m very frustrated that my blog’s home page has decided (on its own, I assure you) that it wants to be virtually all italics. There’s no code in my blog posts, css, or WordPress templates that should be causing it, so far as I can tell. Damn gremlins. Sorry about the hard-to-read italics. I hope eventually to find a fix.

The first draft of this post was published on TPM Cafe.

Technorati Tags: McCain, Obama, politics

“Kids don’t think about race.
Think like your kids for once.
Think the way they think.” — Chris Matthews

Hat tip to Daily Kos.

Technorati Tags: Matthews, Obama

“Gosh I’m tired of divisive exchange,
And I got one or two things
to say about change
Like the change we must change
To the change we hold dear
I really like change
Have I made myself clear?”

Technorati Tags: humor, McCain, Obama, politics

Now, I know there are some who bristle at the notion that faith has a place in the public square. But the fact is, leaders in both parties have recognized the value of a partnership between the White House and faith-based groups…. Now, make no mistake, as someone who used to teach constitutional law, I believe deeply in the separation of church and state, but I don’t believe this partnership will endanger that idea – so long as we follow a few basic principles. First, if you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them – or against the people you hire – on the basis of their religion. Second, federal dollars that go directly to churches, temples, and mosques can only be used on secular programs. And we’ll also ensure that taxpayer dollars only go to those programs that actually work. — Barack Obama

Barack Obama’s recent speech on faith-based initiatives deserves more attention than I have time to write about just now (at a cybercafe), but I want to make a salient point. That point is: Obama’s defense of faith-based initiatives, particularly his intention to require that taxpayer dollars don’t go to groups that proselytize or discriminate, is a terrific example of an Integrally-minded political policy at work. Traditional religious institutions are supported, even strengthened, with government assistance, but only to the extent that they meet the minimal requirement that they are good citizens in a diverse country. In Obama country, amber wins, but only if it resists creating a “dominance holarchy” wherein its intolerance and exclusivism (proselytization and discrimination) trump the values of orange’s egalitarianism and green’s pluralism. Since amber obviously has lots of problems avoiding a “dominance holarchy”, government helps the country move along its evolutionary path, with the more flexible and responsive elements of religion (orange and green) benefiting disproportionately over the recalcitrant traditionalists. Progress happens.

Of course, this phenomenon is scary as hell to conservative religionists. Rod Dreher writes:

But here’s something worth considering. Obama has recently declared himself opposed to the attempt to amend California’s constitution, or the U.S. Constitution, to ban same-sex marriage. He says that each state should make up its own mind, but that’s entirely disingenuous, because what he really means is that each state Supreme Court should make up its mind. If he were really in favor of the state making up its mind, he wouldn’t oppose this ballot initiative. Anyway, here’s the thing. If gay marriage gets read by SCOTUS into the US Constitution as a fundamental civil right, as Obama no doubt wishes, I’m pretty sure that no religious organization that adheres to the traditional Christian/Jewish/Muslim teaching about same-sex marriage will be eligible to receive taxpayer funds as part of any faith-based initiative. So his proclamation today that he will support and expand federal funding for faith-based initiatives would, in that case, mean that he would in effect support federal funding for liberal faith-based groups only. The only churches, synagogues, etc., that would be eligible to receive federal funds would be those that have abandoned traditional teaching on homosexuality. Right?

Well, that’s a bit paranoid. But surely there’s a sound point here: traditionalists will not be big winners of faith-based initiative contracts if they insist on continuing to discriminate. Government should not be telling religious people what to believe, and it certainly wouldn’t under an Obama presidency. But as for special benefits, there’s no guaranteed right to those. And when government grants religious groups those benefits, it stands to reason that religions that don’t play well with others will need to let those opportunities pass them by. In an Integral politics, as I see it, religious groups which discriminate should be free to do as they will, but government should not become party to the evil that they do. Sorry, no government subsidies for hate.

Technorati Tags: Dreher, faith-based initiatives, Obama, politics, religion

Is Barack Obama’s thought process an enigma, at least to some conservatives? It seems so, if Ross Douthat, has it right:

It’s true that Obama’s policy positions have been no more fungible than McCain’s (though no less fungible as well, as evidenced by his recent maneuverings), and in many respects they’ve been considerably more detailed. But there remains, I think, a striking opacity to Obama - the deep structures that inform his thinking aren’t out in the open for anyone to see, the way they are with McCain, and in certain ways I feel like I know less about Obama the man than I did when he had just started running for President. This has been reflected across his life and political career: I don’t agree with the entire Steve Sailer take on Obama, but Sailer is on to something when he writes that the Democratic nominee seems to have “spent his life trying on different personalities,” while his core has remained something of a mystery - perhaps even to himself.

Which somehow reminds me of Perez’s Law #13: The integrated mind is always misunderstood by persons whose psychic structures are less integrated. The less integrated, the more mysterious its inner workings will inevitably seem.

Feel free to discuss.

Technorati Tags: consciousness, integral, Obama, Perez's law

Dan Savage’s “cheating can be okay” message is fairly well-known. For the record, Savage doesn’t condone lying to one’s partner or carelessly disregarding one’s obligations. His position is more nuanced:

Getting married—or civilly united or shacking up—is like buying a cow. You know going in that you’re going to have to milk the thing. But unlike an unmilked cow, a spouse—male or female—won’t just stand there in a field and suffer. A spouse is a cow with a credit card, a job, and a car. If you don’t milk the cow you married, your cow has the means to go out and find someone who will. If you’re fine with that, for God’s sake tell your cow. If you lose interest in sex but want to stay married for the kids, friendship, or financial security, apologize to your cow and tell ‘em you’ll do them the courtesy of turning a blind eye if they’ll do you the courtesy of being milked discreetly elsewhere.

Savage’s defense of cheating seems to be seeping into the culture. In a post on the Blowfish blog, Greta Christina opines that she has recently had a change of heart about whether or not it’s okay to cheat in monogamous relationships. She writes:

I wish with all my heart that more couples would spell this stuff out: talk about it openly, negotiate agreements they can both live with . . . both early on in their relationships, and as things shift and change. It bugs me that so many people make unthinking default assumptions about the most important decisions in their lives.

But the reality is that people do make default assumptions about relationships. Monogamy is one; continued sex is another.

And if you dance, you have to pay the piper. You lie in the bed that you make. Plus whatever other cliches you can think of about taking responsibility for your actions. If you make unspoken default assumptions about your relationship — such as the assumption of monogamy — you have no right to take umbrage if your partner also makes unspoken default assumptions . . . such as the continuation of sex.

I think that Savage, and those like Christina who follow his lead, would be better off not trying to disparage the traditional prohibition on cheating. Instead, they should encourage partners to making cheating wholly unncessary (for example, by encouraging partners unwilling to be monogamous to negotiate groundrules and parameters for non-exclusivity).

Unless a partner says something like, “I’m going to have sex outside of this relationship, and will live with the consequences whatever they may be”, then yes having sex with someone else is cheating. (With a warning, it’s still cheating. But at least it’s not dishonest. It’s a red flag to renegotiate the relationship contract.) And if the agreement is monogamy, then the partner’s choice needs to be discouraged and punished in order to maintain the sanctity of the relationship and enforce the relationship “contract”.

The principle at stake in my view is the notion that healthy, mature relationship ethics must be subject to a delicate balancing act of values inherent in a range of developmental levels. A great relationship will have partners with active, fulfilling sex lives (healthy red values); encourage virtuous upholding of the sacredness of the relationship bonds and the profanity of cheating (healthy amber values); uphold mutually agreed upon behavior agreements (healthy orange values); and, finally, allow for different but morally acceptable relationship arrangements for different members of a multicultural society (healthy green values). In short, as I see it, turquoise values offers an ethic of fidelity to monogamy for couples who choose monogamy; fidelity to negotiated relationship agreements for those who don’t.

Not all relationships are capable of the sort of flexibility and dynamic flow necessary to successfully achieve such a delicate balance of values. In fact, relationships capable of such responsivity are probably quite rare (fewer than 1 in 10, I would imagine). And in such relationships, the demands of morality are not confined to a simple list of prohibited behaviors. Morality demands reverence and respect for the embodiment of Eros and Agape recognized as the very presence of Spirit with the relationship.

Eros, the divine principle of expansive evolution, calls for us to find in sex a freedom from all earthly attachments; Agape, paradoxically, the divine principle of integrative involution, calls for us to find in sex an irreducible interconnectedness to all earthly bonds. Some of our relationships eroticize the other-in-otherness (heteroerotic polarity), and others eroticize the other-in-sameness (homoerotic infusion). The spiritual path of sex may diverge in transcendence or self-immanence, and yet ultimately it may reveal the nonduality of All Being. Or so, I imagine, the Integralist may hold as an inspiring ideal, and attempt humbly to work out in practice.

The trendy tendency to say “cheating can be okay” places a premium on red and green values (self-expression and pluralism) over those of amber and orange (sacredness and integrity). But a more integrated ethic doesn’t allow one set of values to dominate over the others. Instead, an integrated ethic encourages an understanding of relationship as a special place for an encounter with Spirit, and a reverence for sex as a mode of the unfolding of an entire evolutionary spectrum of values.

Technorati Tags: cheating, integral, monogamy, Sex and Gender

Natalia Antanova writes “I Obectify Men” on Feministe:

I know this doesn’t sound terribly progressive of me, but I think some objectification is healthy, whether one is male or female. I believe that both male and female desire should have a place in our discourse - which is why so much of my professional work is dedicated to football and footballers and footballers’ legs. It is all quite serious. Stop smirking.

I do think that because of power differentials, objectification of women more readily becomes a springboard for abuse, and worse. But I do think that there is a genuinely OK way of expressing one’s appreciation for someone else’s physical body and/or persona (and hell, a beautiful mind can be just as sexy). And I want more women to be comfortable with expressing their views on men and women that they find attractive, and even be superficial about it.

These conversations can be dangerous. Desire can be dangerous. But a world in which we do not have these conversations would be too sterile for my taste. Too many times, I run up against the notion that it is somehow “undignified” for a woman to participate, to be too sexual, and too frank, or allow herself a moment of shallowness; I hear people say that she is merely “lowering herself” to the status of men (I’ve seen that on feminist blogs as well as other types of blogs). But I disagree wholeheartedly. I think it all depends on context.

I’m interested to know what you all think about this.

What do I think of this? She’s right. She doesn’t sound very “progressive” at all. Thank goodness. Progressivism’s overly simplistic, inhumane, moralistic victimology makes it an embarrassing ideology at times, and it’s a good thing that many actual progressives don’t actually hold rigidly to the strict ideals. What Natlia sounds like, actually, is something like a progressive who realizes that her own feminism seems to contradict her own intuitions, a deeply felt sense of goodness regarding one’s own pleasure and desire, and a recognition that sexual hunger seems paradoxically both uplifting (”okay”) and debasing (”superficial”). In short, this writer expresses a longing for a post-feminist affirmation of bodily desire and a yearning for freedom from the subjugation of desire to political correctness … and a longing for a post-postmodern affirmation of both superficiality and depth. She sounds like a proto-Integralist.

I share Natalia’s desire for a discourse that boldly proclaims that it’s okay to be human, and to have both shallowness and depth. And I wish that more women and men who call themselves progressive would recognize that their ideology seems so constraining because it is so constraining, so disconnected from the body and its undemocratic nature, disconnected also from Spirit and its holarchies.

Affirm footballers’ legs! And affirm footballers’ athletic grace and fierce determination in pursuit of human excellence! And affirm their beauty as subjects-in-themselves and objects-for-us … and as the subject/objects beyond subect/object distinction, perfect mirrors of Spirit in this moment, this kick, this jump, this little prick of awakening to the arising moment.

Technorati Tags: feminism, gender, postmodernism, sexuality, Spirit, sports

Let’s talk about sexuality, spirituality, and the AIDS epidemic. I’ll be a member of a discussion panel of religious leaders, community leaders, activists, and authors meeting July 10th from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at the Capitol Hill Library in Seattle.

The forum is sponsored by the Absurd Reality Theatre, the group putting on “Angels in America: Millennium Approaches”, the award-winning play by Tony Kushner. The panelists will use Kushner’s “gay fantasia on social themes” as a springboard to discuss the place of the gay community and persons living with AIDS in contemporary American spirituality.

Technorati Tags: HIV/AIDS, Kushner, spirituality

Elite: representing the most choice or select; best: an elite group of authors. By the usual definition, America’s political candidates are unquestionably elites. They are the victors of the modern primary system, one of the most challenging contests ever invented.

A post today by Matthew Yglesias makes me want to shout: can everyone please stop pretending that our leaders are not elites? And by “everyone” I mean principally the GOP political operatives who try to convince Americans that their opponents are elites, unlike their own …

… John McCain is an all-American regular guy who, like most people, earns his keep by marrying an heiress. Like average, everyday folks the McCain’s rely on credit cards to make ends meet month-to-month “Cindy McCain charged as much as $500,000 in a single month on one American Express card and $250,000 on another, while one of their two dependent children had an AmEx card with a monthly balance as large as $50,000.” Yes it’s true, one of McCain’s dependent children spent approximately the median annual household income of the United States in a single month and that’s how McCain knows how to connect with regular people.

Similarly, Mrs. McCain “favors suits made by the German designer Escada, which typically retail for around $3,000 a pop” so she understands that most Americans welcome Wal-Mart’s discount prices. And like many Americans, the McCains are very effected by developments in the real estate market, since “trusts and corporations controlled by her and her children spent nearly $11 million between the summer of 2004 and February 2008 on three condominiums in Phoenix and a pair outside San Diego.” The McCains understand that these days many young people graduate from college saddled with debt and need a helping hand, that’s why they spent “$700,000 for a 1,900-square foot, three-bedroom loft condo for her then-22-year-old daughter Meghan McCain” after she graduated from Columbia. Similarly, they know all about problems with inflation since they “increased their budget for household employees from $184,000 in 2006 to $273,000 in 2007, according to John McCain’s tax returns.”

Technorati Tags: elitism, McCain, Obama, politics

The blogger behind one of the brighest lights in the Episcopal/Anglican blogosphere has decided to move on to new projects. I miss Father Jake’s insight and humor and enthusiasm already, and wish him every success as he retires from blogging.

Sadly, he cites his frustration with the toxic rhetoric in the Church as one important reason for his departure. Here’s how Jake starts his goodbye:

After much thought, prayer, and consultation with others, I’ve decided that it is time to close down Jake’s place.

This is not an easy decision. In some ways, it feels like a part of me is dying.

There’s many reasons for making this decision:

1. I believe that a constant exposure to some of the toxic rhetoric found on the net has had a negative impact on my spiritual health. I find it more difficult to discern the glory of God. Most likely this is because I’ve become too preoccupied with the depravity of man. I need to take care of myself.

2. I’m no longer sure that our conversations here are helpful to the Episcopal Church. We have become as polarized in our responses as those with whom we disagree. The reality is that we are all children of God. There is no “us” and “them.” There is only “we.” I honestly believe that. Continuing to focus on our divisions deepens them, and provides a poor witness to the hope that is in us.

3. I am considering launching a new project, which could be hindered by some of the strident conversations we have had here. I’m passionate about this project. I believe it to be a calling from God. I’m going to follow that call.

I know first-hand that the very act of reading the anti-gay hostility on many of the Christian blogs is spiritually painful. Taking regular vacations from blogging is an essential part of my “burnout avoidance plan”.

Technorati Tags: blogs, Christianity, Episcopal