Clinton Finally Agrees to Debate in North Carolina

Back on March 13, Barack Obama accepted nearly-simultaneous offers to debate in both Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

Clinton immediately also accepted -- in Pennsylvania. No mention of North Carolina. ("North Carolina? Where I expect to lose?" Crickets.)

Now, though, Obama's position in Pennsylvania polls is moving steadily upward. If Clinton doesn't win big in PA, she's a goner with any Superdelegates she still hopes to pull her way with her spurious "electability" argument. The only way she could survive a close shave in PA (let alone a loss, which was unthinkable back on March 13) is for her, by some miracle, to take North Carolina, which Obama expects to win -- and/or for Obama to make some huge, unexpected gaffe, which he's unlikely to do in scripted appearance. And, of course, if her campaign's so far in debt that she can't even pay her own staff's medical insurance premiums or the bills of the small businesses she hired to set up stages and lighting for her campaign appearances, and raising so little money that she's afraid to even release her March fundraising numbers [UPDATE: a few hours later, she changed her mind and released them -- half what Obama raised], these next primaries are her last chance to pull something out of a hat (all her protestations about going "all the way" aside).

So, seeing Pennsylvania (and her shot at President, at least this election cycle) slipping away, Clinton's folks announced a little over an hour ago that she WILL debate him in North Carolina as well.

This isn't transparency: back in March, Clinton kept challenging Obama to more debates (20 wasn't enough) -- yet 22 was too many? No: it's strategic. She'd only debate where she expected to win, until she expected to lose, at which point she might as well debate where she expects to lose in the long-shot hope that she'll win.

Complicated? Yep. But then, so is Hillary's electoral math -- and all sleight of hand requires some complicated distraction.

The Pennsylvania and North Carolina debates should be a lot of fun, at least. In their last debate, Clinton was still playing nice, even plagiarizing John Edwards and saying that she was "proud" to be on the same stage as Obama. But now her campaign has not only announced that it intended to "throw the kitchen sink" at Obama, but has tried its best to do so. The gloves are off, Obama has shown that while he won't attack he will vigorously defend -- and this may be Obama's best chance to, in his statesmanlike way, put Clinton down for the count. Which, after a good run but for the greater good of the Democratic Party at this point, is where she belongs.
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Hillary Clinton and the Opaque Politics of Porkbarrel Spending

UPDATE, APRIL 3 PART 2: And six hours later, she changes course and releases her March numbers. Strong public opinion favoring an open democratic process is a great thing, ain't it?

UPDATE, APRIL 3, 2008: In another example of oversecrecy: Hillary Clinton's campaign won't release its (presumably dismal) March fundraising figures until forced to do so by election laws -- which isn't until 2 days before the critical (for her) Pennsylvania primary. Couple this with her (hopefully unsuccessful) effort not to release her 2000 through 2006 tax returns until three days before that primary, her campaign's strenuous effort to encourage absentee voting in PA (so that people will have cast their votes before any bad news is released), and her foot-dragging on disclosing her earmarks (discussed in the post below), and you have a candidate working hard NOT to let voters have full information until it's too late. Which isn't transparent -- and also suggests she's artificially propping up her "electability" argument, when in fact she probably will be significantly less electable than she is now (which ain't saying much) after all facts are known.

ORIGINAL POST: Transparency is essential to a democracy. When Bill Clinton assembled timber company executives, environmental advocates, scientists, and lawmakers in a public forum in Portland, Oregon to hammer out a consensus agreement on timber policy, that was transparent. When Hillary Clinton met with a similar group representing those interested in healthcare reform, but behind closed doors, that was not transparent -- and her signature healthcare reform proposal failed. When Dick Cheney assembled a similar, even more secret energy task force, it was not transparent. Basically, we like and will support transparent initiatives and candidates; we (legitimately) distrust opaque initiatives and candidates.

When Barack Obama put all his tax returns for the years 2000 through 2006 online a little over a week ago, that was transparent. If Hillary Clinton keeps her promise to put her tax returns online this week, that will be transparent. If she blanks out major portions of those tax returns (as she whited out entire pages of her First Lady schedules), that would not be transparent -- and I'll bring it to your attention. (John McCain hasn't produced his tax returns and hasn't given any indication that he'll do so, but that's no surprise -- today's Republicans generally are allergic to transparency.)

There's another important area where our candidates need to be transparent: earmarks. Earmarks are specific spending requests made by individual Senators that bypass the normal competitive bidding process for government process and/or remove the Executive Branch's discretion on how to allocate money generally allotted by Congress for categories or kinds of spending. (They're named after the ancient practice of placing unique cuts in the ears of livestock to show ownership.)

Earmarks can be helpful, because Senators should be aware of what their own state's spending needs are and it may be very efficient for them to target federal money to directly meet their state's needs, and also because they help prevent a President from rewarding or punishing individual members of Congress by spending or withholding money from particular projects that are important to them and their constituents. But earmarks also are dangerous in a democracy, because they're the most direct way a Senator can reward a supporter: construction contractor makes campaign donation, Senator earmarks federal spending on a road project that said construction contractor is positioned to be awarded, said construction contractor makes back 100 times its original "investment." Connecting campaign contributions (which are fairly transparent) to earmarks is an invaluable way of determining whether a politician is using the citizens' own money to get the same citizens to re-elect him or her -- ie, whether a politician is on the up-and-up.

But there's a problem: under one of those strange rules that only the U.S. Congress could evolve (like filibuster and cloture and "holds"), earmarks are confidential: a Senator can direct that federal tax money be spent on a particular project without the public knowing about that Senator's involvement. That rule is a travesty -- it's our money! They're our employees! -- but that's the way it is.

Understanding that this rule is unfair, and wanting voters to know what spending projects he considers important, Barack Obama has "released" -- surrendered his privacy regarding -- his earmarks. John McCain, to his credit, doesn't do earmarks at all.

But Hillary Clinton not only engages in earmarking, but she voted against a proposed bill to make earmarks public and has refused to make her earmarks public. We know how many she placed, and we know their total cost, but we don't know specifically what they are. While she's nowhere near as bad as Republican Thad Cochran of Mississippi ($892 million in non-defense earmarks), she's still a pretty big spender: she was the second highest "earmark" spender in the Senate in the 2008 Defense Appropriations bill. She's no slouch when it comes to non-domestic spending either: the annual Pig Book report on porkbarrel spending released today by the group Citizens Against Government Waste (reported by CNN) reveals that:

"Sen. (Barack) Obama had 53 earmarks worth $97 million dollars, and Sen. (Hillary) Clinton had 281 earmarks worth $296 million. Sen. Obama recently said he would not request any project for this upcoming fiscal year," said Tom Schatz, the president of Citizens Against Government Waste.

"And of course Sen. (John) McCain has never requested them and he won't be doing so in 2009. So now the question is if Sen. Clinton will join the other major candidates in saying that she will not request any earmarks for 2009."

C.A.G.W. is wrong about one thing: the immediate question isn't whether Clinton will join McCain and Obama in pledging not to engage in secret earmarks next year. The immediate question is whether she will release her earmarks for this year (and for all prior years), so voters know what -- and who -- she spent nearly one-third of a billion dollars of our money on.

Again: McCain doesn't engage in earmarking. Obama is a modest earmarker, and has made his public. Clinton is a much larger earmarker, is opposed to making earmarks transparent, and has refused to identify the specific 281 projects she spent our money on in the last year alone.

That's secretive, not transparent. It's Cheney-esque, not Democratic. Clinton should release not only her tax returns, but also her earmarks, a.s.a.p., to let voters know where her priorities -- and her loyalties -- can be found.
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Breaking News: Clinton Clearly Promises to Produce Full Tax Returns Next Week

In a lengthy and wide-ranging telephone press conference today called by Hillary Clinton Communications Director Howard Wolfson, Deputy Communications Director Phil Singer, and Policy Director Neera Tanden, I asked the following question:

I’ve seen reports that Senator Clinton will be producing some kind of financial information next week, but the details have been a little vague. Will Senator Clinton be producing her complete 2000 through 2006 tax returns, including all schedules, next week?

Wolfson responded:

Sen Clinton said ... that she would be producing her tax returns within the week, and we are endeavoring to do just that. And as to – I’m not fully conversant enough to know what the distinction is between schedules and other tax information, so I don’t want to give you an answer that is incorrect, but I am quite confident that all of the information that the public needs and that reporters need to make very, very informed judgments about their finances will be made available.... [O]f course they have filed annual financial disclosure forms while Senator Clinton was in the Senate that details [sic] the sources of their income, and obviously tax returns will provide additional information, and I am confident that you and others will have ample opportunity to look at them and if you have followup questions of course we’ll be available to answer them, but I am quite confident that all information that is necessary to make very good judgments about their finances will be made available.

I asked a followup:

Scanning and posting tax returns is a fairly simple process. Why is there any delay at all in making her returns available?

Wolfson responded:

You know, why was there delay in Senator Obama’s making his returns available....? You know, we’ll have them within the week, you’ll have an opportunity to look at them, you can turn a skeptical eye to them as you may care to and if you have followup questions about them we’ll be happy to answer them, but they’ll be available online.... and people will be able to take a look at them.

I admit it: I’m a cynic. I saw no news reports or press releases in which Clinton herself promised to produce tax returns next week – but maybe it just wasn’t publicized. I still don’t understand why it takes more than 24 hours to have a staffer scan and post tax returns; some bloggers and commentors have articulated fears that the Clintons are using this time to have their returns doctored, and while I don’t share those fears, posting the returns immediately after Obama did would have snuffed out any such speculation. It also strikes me as a little funny that someone as well-informed and sophisticated as Wolfson doesn’t know what tax schedules are – they’re simply the attachments that go with the Form 1040 whenever a taxpayer itemizes his or her deductions or has investment income, as the Clintons (and Wolfson) certainly do. And the length and repetitiveness of his answer makes me mindful of the Queen’s comment in Hamlet: “the lady doth protest too much, methinks.” As one person has exegised the line, “[s]omeone who is telling the truth [usually does so] ... rather plainly and shortly. Someone who is assuring too much is usually lying either to herself or to the audience”– ie, it implies that “the lady” “will break her word.”

But I’m tired of being cynical, and I’m going to trust that the lady’s word is good. I’m looking forward to next week, when we’ll all know exactly how good it is.

To those who encouraged Clinton to do the right thing by participating in the “Tax Fax” grassroots campaign (outlined on both The Huffington Post and VichyDems) by faxing copies of their own tax returns, with personal info deleted, to Clinton’s campaign offices – you can stand down. THANK YOU, and GOOD WORK!
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Hillary Clinton's Plan for the Economy Isn't for Us; It's For the Superdelegates

(Update, April 3: More economic plans, no new news.)

SOME POLITICAL CANDIDATES come up with new ideas and new initiatives because they really want to help people. Yes, we've all become cynical -- but there are still some of that good kind.

Then there's the more pedestrian, and plentiful, kind of candidate, the one who will say things and present new initiatives not so much to help people (though that's a nice side effect), but to make him- or herself look good -- to give the impression that they're problem-solving go-getters instead of poll-tracking, focus-group-reading, self-seeking hacks.

Hillary Clinton claims Barack Obama is the second kind: all words, no substance. She's not just wrong; she even knows she's wrong, and is making those accusations just to win, but a lot of people still don't see it. I've been paying a lot of attention to this specific issue -- substance vs. posing -- even, unlike more casual bloggers, listening in and sometimes asking questions during both candidates' regular press conference conference calls and reading all their campaign press releases. I even initially had some reservations about Obama (feel free to search this blog for my older posts about Obama), but the more I see of him, the more I see that he is the real thing. And "the real thing," in politics, is so rare that sometimes we can't even remember what it looks like. And as the campaign drags on, I also see more and more proof that Clinton is the second kind of politician: one who only does things if they'll help her, who wants to win more than she wants to do good. But, as I said, that's hard to show.

But sometimes we get lucky:

Today both candidates are giving major economic addresses. But last Thursday, in an effort to counter Obama's excellent speech that morning about how the Iraq War is dragging down the economy, her campaign emailed me (and 8,600 or so other media outlets) a preview that demonstrates how Hillary Clinton really looks at things -- and how little she actually cares about the real people trapped by the foreclosure crisis.

The Clinton press release is titled, "Must Read: Business Week: Hillary Targets the Credit Crisis. She's stepping up with measures aimed at voters' pocketbook woes." And at first I thought, wow, that's pretty powerful! A major business magazine sees her as the candidate who's taking the lead to really help people facing hard times in a tough economy! But then I actually read it.

Clinton's press release consisted entirely of excerpts from an article in Business Week. Not the whole article, understand -- just the parts that the Clinton campaign thought it was must important for reporters to read -- the "must read" parts, in Clinton's terms. And I was brought back to the sad reality that all Clinton really cares about is the election.

Boiling it down, here are the two things the Clinton campaign people really, really wanted journalists to take note of (bold emphases are mine):

1. Clinton Is Only Helping Citizens In Order To Win Votes -- Of Superdelegates:

"Clinton plans to discuss the details of her stimulus plan in a speech on the economy set for Mar. 24. Further initiatives are likely in coming weeks. The idea, of course, is to show voters exactly what Clinton would do to head off the crisis if she were in the White House. ...

"With Clinton's emphasis on pragmatic plans and pocketbook issues, analysts say she could get a bump up if she can convince voters she's better prepared to handle the economy's deepening problems. With the next big primary set for Apr. 22 in Pennsylvania, 'she's got five weeks to show she can really dominate this issue,' says Daniel Clifton, a political analyst at investment firm Strategas Research Partners. 'This could be a huge opportunity for her to rack up big margins.'...

"The fight over Pennsylvania, which has a struggling industrial base, a large population of blue-collar workers, and rising foreclosures, will be critical. Even if Clinton tallies big victories in Pennsylvania or other remaining states, she will probably not emerge with a delegate lead. Yet by nurturing the perception that she's the one to save voters' jobs and homes, she could sway the critical superdelegates to her side. 'Her only case is: I've got the lunch-bucket votes, and we can't win in November without them,' says pollster John Zogby."

2. She's Not Doing Anything For the Economy That Obama's Not Doing, Too: As if to underscore the fact that Clinton's initiatives are just for show, the excerpts that Clinton chose to distribute make clear that there's no substantive difference between the candidates, who both are carefully watching the "Main Street" economy and supporting legislation to help unemployed people, homeowners, and local communities:

"Obama's advisers say that he, too, is studying further plans to address the economy's problems, including measures to extend unemployment benefits and aid communities that have suffered a loss of tax revenues through foreclosures. Like Clinton, he backs congressional plans to refinance homeowners who need cheaper mortgages. 'If conditions remain bad or worse, those are the things we'll push,' says Heather Higginbottom, Obama's policy director."

There's an important nuance here. The Clinton folks didn't write the Business Week article. But they did choose which parts of it they wanted to emphasize -- and they intentionally chose the parts that showed Clinton as a shrewd political operator (that unelected Superdelegates hopefully will think is a good match for John McCain), ignoring the parts that might have showed her as being a true stateswoman working for the common good.

Why would they choose to emphasize the "she's a manipulative politician playing the angles" parts? Because that's actually what her campaign wants the press to hint at -- that she's trickier than Obama. Why? So that despite the mathematical reality that it's statistically impossible for her to catch up with Obama in the popular vote, and despite the polls that confirm more Democrats want Obama to be the nominee than Clinton (polls she's working hard to change by slamming Obama at every opportunity), she can still snag the nomination in August by getting the Supers to ignore the voters and select her -- just like the Supreme Court ignored the will of the voters and selected Bush President in 2000.

I dislike the fact that Hillary Clinton is a manipulative, win-at-any-cost, last-generation, faux-progressive, pro-corporate pol whose chief campaign strategist is a pollster and who is jeopardizing the whole Democratic Party's chances of winning the White House by taking her husband's advice last December to "attack" Obama -- even if doing so means making false allegations; even if doing so means McCain will win in November.

But even more than that, I dislike the fact that she's not only not trying to hide her true nature, she's actually subtly bragging about it in order to win the over a small but critical subset of Superdelegates -- those who aren't just party activists, but party insiders who are so circumscribed by their Inside-the-Beltway worldview and so beholden to the Clinton machine's favors that they would actually ignore the popular will and broker the convention instead.

The first fact merely shows what she is; the second fact shows that she doesn't even have the decency to show some shame about it.
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The Privacy Act of 1974, Criminal Penalties, Verbatim

UPDATE, MARCH 25: The Justice Department, quite properly, gets involved.

ORIGINAL POST: On three separate occasions, dating back to January, employees of contractors working for the State Department accessed -- and did God knows what with -- presidential candidate Barack Obama's passport records, which ordinarily include not only information on a person's international travels but also a good deal of private personal information. It could be relatively innocent; it could be a Nixonian effort to find dirt on Obama. Yet the State Department's Inspector General, who is responsible for looking into such things, was not notified until today -- and before he was notified, and therefore before he had a chance to investigate what really happened and why, lower-level State Department employees made the determination that the employees had not violated the Privacy Act of 1974, and therefore that the matter did not need to be referred to the Attorney General's office.

That's not the sort of decision that's normally made at such a low level, especially when the person whose privacy was violated is prominent -- for instance, a sitting Senator and Presidential nominee like Obama. The cover-up, and the regularity with which it happened, and the fact that Obama's office was not told about any of the incidents until today, all suggest that it's possible -- of course not probable, nor likely, but in a town like D.C., definitely possible -- that some skulduggery is behind this.

The statute that almost certainly was violated (whether the State Department thinks so or not) is the federal Privacy Act of 1974, passed in the aftermath of Watergate, the relevant provision of which (5 United States Code section 552a(i)(1)) reads as follows:

Criminal Penalties. (1) Any officer or employee of an agency [note: also includes agency contractors and their employees], who by virtue of his employment or official position, has possession of, or access to, agency records which contain individually identifiable information the disclosure of which is prohibited by this section or by rules or regulations established thereunder, and who knowing that disclosure of the specific material is so prohibited, willfully discloses the material in any manner to any person or agency not entitled to receive it, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and fined not more than $5,000. ...

(3) Any person who knowingly and willfully requests or obtains any record concerning an individual from an agency under false pretenses shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and fined not more than $5,000.

Why is it so important to pursue a criminal investigation, if there is any suggestion that a violation occurred? Because, in the course of that investigation, the poor, low-level saps who actually did the deeds almost certainly will tell everything they know -- which probably is that they were merely satisfying their own prurient curiosity, but which might be that they passed the information on to someone who would much rather remain anonymous. And both Obama and the American people have the right to know definitively which one it is.

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It's Not "Still Up In The Air", It's Just Strung Out...

UPDATE, MARCH 24: While Clinton campaigns in Pennsylvania and Obama takes a well-earned rest day, both of their campaigns continue to trade press releases keeping the heat on each other -- and John McCain campaigns in California, a state Democrats should be able to win in November, without a clear Democratic frontrunner to contest him and ensure that those indispensable 55 electoral votes stay in the Democratic column. It's agonizing: individual ego may well cost Democrats the White House -- and enable a Republican to replace at least one or two of the three remaining Democrats on the Supreme Court with Republicans, making the Court 7-2 or even 8-1 Republican. Women supporting Hillary Clinton should think hard about the impact her extending her losing campaign all the way to August may have on women's rights, because it's not just the White House that's at stake.

UPDATE, MARCH 20: No matter how well Hillary Clinton does in Pennsylvania, it's increasingly clear that she can't mathematically win the popular vote, and will need to rely on "Superdelegates" overriding the will of the voters. Not good for the Party or the country, as discussed below...

ORIGINAL POST: It's not "still up in the air", as a CNN piece says; it's just strung out now, probably all the way to August, to the party's detriment and McCain's gain. In the past, Clinton's campaign itself has said repeatedly that it's not about the number of states, it's about the number of delegates -- and given how close the margins were yesterday, plus the fact that Obama may actually have WON Texas when the primary and caucus votes are combined (!), Clinton probably gained only four net delegates, not enough to cut deeply into Obama's roughly 100-delegate lead.

So the math hasn't changed, just the P.R. spin. And the only way the nomination is "up in the air", mathematically, is that there still is a possibility that Clinton will be able to broker the convention and receive the nomination even though Obama will win both the popular vote and the majority of "pledged" delegates chosen by the popular vote. (In a press conference today, Clinton's campaign manager said flat out that that's fine by him -- the popular vote doesn't matter and if they can get the Michigan and Florida delegations seated, or sway the "superdelegates" whose votes are equivalent to roughly 10,000 real voters', they'll consider that fair. Do you agree?)

UPDATE, MARCH 13: Readers shouldn't be fooled by Clinton's current pretense that all she wants is Florida and Michigan's voters to be heard. That isn't what she's said in the past, it isn't what she's said in her press releases or press briefings, and it isn't even what she's saying now, if you read carefully enough. What I wrote above, and immediately below, still hold true: Obama wants either the rules followed as-is or a real re-election held, and Clinton only wants those options that give her an unfair edge -- which is why she still calls the Michigan election "fair" even though Obama's name wasn't even on the ballot. And don't trust the MainStream Media (MSM) to tell the whole truth -- they can't fit nuance into soundbites!

UPDATE, MARCH 6: Clinton's campaign has repeatedly said that there's no need for Florida or Michigan -- which were disqualified by the Democratic Party by the DNC, with Clinton's assent, in which the candidates all pledged not to campaign, and in which, in one case (Michigan), Obama's name didn't even appear on the ballot -- to hold valid votes or caucuses. No -- Clinton wants those two states' delegations (even Michigan's) seated at the national convention WITHOUT fair votes. Why? Because those states' skewed primaries resulted in Clinton racking up big "wins" (of course -- how hard can it be, for instance, when your opponent's name isn't even on the ballot?). I've listened in on the press conferences, and they're not even trying to hide it. FURTHER UPDATE: Just one example of Clinton campaign's about-face here.

What everyone (but Clinton) wants, of course, is for both states to hold legitimate primaries or caucuses, decide for real which candidate they prefer, and take their rightful place at the national convention. One job of true patriots is to fight for this to happen, against those who would rather benefit from a rigged system than actually abide by the will of the people. There is, happily, some hope -- far from certain, but hope, according to a CNN piece -- of the establishment "machine" losing and the right thing actually being done. I'll have an action plan (including contact info for the Democratic National Committee Rules Committee members and other power brokers who will make the final decision) up here in a few days, so please bookmark and check back. Thanks!
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