Change Fewer People Do Believe In

Larry Lessig sees the ever-increasing danger of the Obama campaign snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, the candidate discrediting himself via (though Lessig doesn't see it this way) right-shifting policy positions on a variety of issues from FISA, Isreal, Iran and gun control through to the public campaign finance boondoggle and his backtracking on a promised series of debates with Republican rival John McCain.

Indeed, Lessig - and Obama - should be concerned. For such mis-steps have served to strip much of the gloss from candidate Obama and have recently made him appear like just another politician rather than the enlightened being that so energized and enraptured his supporters just a short time ago.

In particular, Lessig warns that dampening the enthusiasm of those who have hitherto been Obama's greatest supporters is likely to end up with many of those erstwhile voters staying home on the first Tuesday in November rather than going out to the polls. Worse, as punk troublemaker and ever-astute political commentator Jello Biafra warns, the emerging Obama betrayal may have even more severe negative consequences for the Democrats - and what passes for the American left - in the longer-term:

"It’s not as though a President ‘Barack-star’ is going to wave his magic wand and suddenly Iraq is all better. My biggest worry about him is that if he wins, he’s just going to turn around, pull off the mask, and be the creature of the corporate establishment that his voting record indicates. And a whole generation inspired to get off their asses and participate will become so disillusioned that they don’t vote again."

Biafra's fears appear well-founded: 'Barack-star', it seems, has chosen to start removing the mask even before the general election.

What consequences this will have overall for Democratic chances in November remain to be seen, but this correspondent has decided to vote Green. The Republicans are hateful and loathesome, certainly, but the Democrats are arguably even worse for pretending to be righteous and just and then kneeling down before the worst, most evil and despised administration in US history anyway to help them shred the Constitution and rule of law that our forefathers fought and died for. As the last week has shown, the fascist Republicans couldn't even do it without the assistance of Democratic collaborators, including those at the top of the party hierarchy in Congress.

Enough is enough: this correspondent will no longer compromise core beliefs by voting for the lesser of any evils. A vote for the establishment, whether red or blue, is a vote for more of the same, and what's left of our Constitutional democracy can no longer afford that.

Whatever happened to those heroes?

Larry Lessig says we should all just chill out about Obama's recent mis-steps. Being a bit of a cynic, I'd almost be prepared to agree with regards to finance, but on FISA, I really think he and many of his posters are misdiagnosing the problem.

Their basic argument seems to be that yes, telecom immunity is bad, but they have bigger fish to fry and this looks like a political loser.

But the key thing we need to keep in focus is what the objective here is. This is a hugely complex chess game. (Or I'm assuming it's complex, since how else can you explain losing twice (ok once) to this President.) The objective of this chess game is to keep focus on the issues that show America why your candidate should win. Keeping focus (in this media environment, at least) is an insanely difficult task. But one tool in that game is picking the fights that resonate in ways that keep focus on the issues that show America why your candidate should win.

So if I'm reading him right, he's saying Obama needs to keep focus on the economy, climate change, etc. and not cede points to the Republicans by getting into a debate about terrorism, which is their home turf.

Put more simply, his point is basically that you shouldn't go picking a fight with Republicans about matters of national security.

To which I really have to ask: Why the hell not?

Republicans have been showing themselves to be incompetent about matters of national security for the last seven years, why on earth do people think that the only way Democrats can win is by pussy-footing around the issue. Up until this point, Obama was doing a good job of turning this conventional wisdom on its head, making headway with such perceived acts of political hara-kiri as suggesting he'd negotiate with Iran.

This is partly because he dresses very nicely and gives a good speech, but also because he does have an awful lot of reality on his side. When he talks about how Iran seems to have halted nucleur development, or how sanctions to Cuba aren't necessarily acheiving the desired effects, he does at least have the advantage of having the weight of expert opinion on his side. That doesn't count for as much as it should in US politics, but it's not nothing.

Telecoms immunity seems to me to be one of those cases. Most experts will tell you that huge dragnet surveillance type systems (like plugging all US telecomunications through the NSA) are great for monitoring the population a large, but useless for targetting specific individuals who know they might be under surveilace and are doing their best to avoid it. You can catch the "sort-of-bad" with these systems, but the "really bad" will slip through the net. If you have a serious look at the issue, that's something that should become clear, so I'm not sure that shying away from that argument is the brilliant act of political strategy that Lessig thinks it is.

This is particularly upsetting because Lessig is the sort of enlightenment guy who spends half his life trying to explain stuff like this, and the other half being vexed about how politics tends to get these sorts of "easy questions" wrong. And his usual explanation for why they get it wrong is that there's not enough public scrutiny. This is why he gets involved in lots of technology-based projects to make congress more transparent.

So from that point of view, this shouldn't look to him like an issue to shy away from for Obama. It should, in fact, look like a golden opportunity: take the right side on FISA and dare the Republicans to come after you on it. If they want to have a debate about their unconstitutional and ineffective surveillance practices in the glaring light of an election campaign, then good fucking luck to them.