High Pressure Sales, and a Cooling Off Period

The good-looking, smooth-talking stranger stood at your door, asking only a moment of your time. Later on, you stood there telling your Significant Other how you canceled a bunch of accounts, transferred a bunch of assets, and signed the both of you up for a Lifetime Subscription to … well … you’re not sure what it was, precisely, are you?

It’s unbelievable … totally NEW … this guy says it will help us sleep better … clean up our streets … lower the electric bill … keep the kids in college, and out of trouble … safeguard our retirement … listen, it’s an integrated, all-purpose, um … no, you can’t measure it by some old-fashioned yardstick … no, I can’t explain it any better, you’d have to hear that from HIM … he inspired me … REALLY … just look at these goosebumps … yeah, we have to move NOW … it’s a ground-floor opportunity … our Defining Moment … just talk to the neighbors, willya? … everybody‘s buying in!

Well, “everybody” isn’t buying in, but a lot of people who should know better bought in the heat of the moment. You might be one of them. It’s nothing to be ashamed of — statutory Cooling Off Periods apply to certain sales transactions for good reason.

On the calendar, Montana and South Dakota lie ahead (furnishing valuable Primary data points in the wide open spaces of Caucus country), as well as Puerto Rico (which pols and pundits ignore at their peril) … and then June, and July, and August before the nomination becomes irrevocable. Now is the time for convention delegates to breathe deep, slow down, cool off, and review the value proposition they either signed onto or are being pressured to sign.

Now, before we join the Esau Generation and trade our political birthrights for a mess of potshots at Washington DC and the Old Rules of Politics, I’ll suggest a few things to mull over while it still matters.

This series [tagged “Nomination C.O.P.”] is aimed primarily at delegates themselves — pledged, automatic and add-on — regardless of commitment status. The stakes are enormous, and you CAN change your mind if you review how we got here and it doesn’t feel right.

Submitted for your consideration:

• That Obama has reached the “presumptive” precipice on the strength of a Pig in a Poke — the promise of New Rules — without revealing the Rules, or telling us how he knows they might work, or suggesting what his fallback plan is in case some adversary (or some contrary ally) goes ahead and plays by the Old Rules.
• That a New Kinda Politics is the oldest come-on in the Old Kinda Politics; that Rule #1 of the Old Rules is that there ain’t no New Rules.
• That one night in midseason, some bunch of jokers erected new goalposts on the 40 yard line, asserting that a majority of Pledged Delegates determine the nomination. Voters, reporters, pundits and even superdelegates gullibly proceeded to play on as if these were the New Rules of Politics.
• That every time media focus should logically have turned to examining who Obama is, what he thinks, and what he might do as Candidate or President, a media furor (immigrant drivers licenses, “race baiting”, Bosnia, gas tax holidays) erupted with Hillary Clinton as the focus, and that as a consequence, Obama remains very much the unexamined candidate.
• That major media have always despised The Clintons, and (in concert with traditional media critics and Democratic netroots) have repeatedly vaulted onto the playing surface to inflict flagrant fouls against Hillary, and to deflect attention from flagrant fouls committed by Team Obama; that Obama will enjoy no such protection in the arena with McCain, whom the media love every bit as much; and that his thin-skinned reaction to a level playing field will be like unto that of a YMCA recreational swimmer suddenly cast adrift in the Bering Straits.
• That Obama is an inferior bet to win the White House (though some Dem’s may be willing to concede that prize in trade for money, volunteers and turnout in down-ballot races); and that despite running a course boobytrapped at key turns by the same media barons who picked our POTUS in every cycle in memory except 1992 and 1996, Hillary remains a strong favorite to beat McCain.
• That Obama’s entire pledged delegate advantage is an artifact of Caucus Effects, which we can diagnose and adjust; that so is any arguable Obama advantage in the popular vote margin; and that his superdelegate advantage results from an illusion of momentum produced by these first two effects.
• That Obama and Clinton are anything but similar in policy orientation; that Hillary, her advisers and allies are inclined to activist, interventionist government, home and abroad, while Obama, his advisers and some allies are inclined to see intervention as a vice in both spheres; that Obama and his crew place naive trust in markets and are naively pessimistic as to the progressive virtues of politics.
• That Obama has not tipped his hand as to the price of Unity; that we know not who must concede how much, or of what, to quell the dread demons of Faction; that we know not his plan, nor how it will work, not that it will work; that we know not what he intends in case it doesn’t.
• That America is at several urgent pragmatic crossroads that have seeming little to do with Obama’s Defining Moment; that conspicuous conservative failure has generated a rare opportunity cycle for straightforward progressive partisan politics; and that there’s no telling when such an opportunity might come our way again.
• That if Obama loses in November, two profoundly disappointed young generations will form lifelong aversions to idealistic engagement in politics, and will be less receptive to future true progressives who try to rally the common people to the common good.
• That if Obama wins in November, he must necessarily dash the expectation of many constituencies even under best case, i.e., “trifecta”, conditions. (See the Price of Unity.)
• That if Obama wins in November, under worst case conditions (more likely than best case), he saves the GOP’s burning bacon, sets us up 2010 for another Gingrich Revolution, and stacks the 2012 redistricting deck against us.
• That Obama is ill-prepared to be President; that he lacks appreciate of the demands of the office; that he lacks a governing philosophy, other than a general reluctance to get involved, to make decisions, or to say “no”; that this portends chaos in the pre-inaugural transition effort, followed by a regime marked by courtly gamesmanship under his nose while the sands of opportunity run through the hourglass.
• That observers have been too distracted playing Gotcha with Hillary to figure out where Obama stands on almost anything, but that such attention is inevitable. [For example, such worthies as Marc Ambinder, ABC’s Rick Klein, and Frank James at the Trib have just recently begun trying to decode his position on meeting with foreign adversaries, even though this played a key role in his mid-2007 effort to pose himself on one side of a bright line (“will meet”) and place Clinton jointly with Bush on the opposite (“won’t meet”) side.]

Other considerations that may come to our attention as the C.O.P. runs by, but these will do for starters … won’t they?