Open letter to David Plouffe

David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

Dear David -

It feels a bit odd addressing you by your first name, since we have never met, nor are we ever likely to. To you, I am just another name in the somewhat disturbing Obama campaign database that Salon.com reported on yesterday. Someone you are soliciting campaign funds from, as you have before and undoubtedly will again. Still, your e-mail to me today addressed me by my first name and was signed David, just David, so we’ll go with that, shall we?

You wrote to me today to tell me the exciting news: that the Obama campaign had raised $52 million in donations during the month of June, much of it coming from, to use your words, “hundreds of thousands of ordinary people.” Money donated to your “campaign for change.”

Well, good for him, then.

Yet still, you say, it is not enough. We must give more in order to ensure victory against the Republican party. To quote you again, you say:

It’s going to take everything we’ve got to defeat John McCain and the Republican National Committee in November. And we can’t do it without your continued support.

And so you ask me yet again for $100.

I went through my records and that $100, when added to the donations I have already made to the Obama campaign over the course of the past year, would come close to paying my rent for a month here in Redstatesville, where I live.

A drop in the bucket to you. A month of shelter for me.

If you had asked me for the money before the FISA vote last week, I might have been more favorably inclined toward your request. Oh, I wouldn’t have given you $100. I can’t afford that at the moment, because, hey, grad student here. But I probably would have tossed in some money. Fifteen, twenty, twenty-five dollars, maybe.

Because I do believe that we need a change of course in this country. And I hope that, if Barack Obama is elected in November, we will be able to start making those changes, and undoing some of the damage the last eight years have brought.

But here’s the thing: I’m not happy with Senator Obama’s vote on the FISA/telecom immunity matter last week. It was an opportunity to stand up for the constitution and the rule of law. And yet somehow, the fourth amendment just kind of fell by the wayside, and Senator Obama was one of the ones who voted to allow that to happen. How is that a change for the better?

And for what? I still don’t understand what possibly could have motivated him to vote the way he did. Or perhaps, I do understand, but don’t want to believe it of him.

Can he really believe that this expansion of the power of the executive branch is warranted? That we should have no right to privacy anymore? That the telecom companies should receive immunity from suits arising out of their violations of the law - a law that was put in place to protect citizens from unwarranted intrusions by the government - without Congress so much as holding hearings to determine just what exactly was done in the name of “keeping us safe from the terrorists”?

No, I am not happy with the Senator at the moment, David.

I’m a grad student, David, so I am on a tight budget. Especially with food and fuel costs going through the roof. My discretionary income is limited. There’s only so much that I can give to political campaigns I support each month.

I would imagine many others who have contributed to the Obama campaign would say the same.

So tell me, David, why I (or they) should give those dollars to someone who didn’t stand up for the constitution, for the rights of Americans, this month?

Others did.

Hillary did. Maybe I should go to her website and give the money to her. Help her pay off some of that campaign debt.

Maybe I should give the money to Kucinich, or Dodd, or Wexler. They seem determined to at least try to stop some of the rampant corruption and decay in the executive branch.

Maybe I should give the money to the local women’s shelter for domestic violence victims, or to the Red Cross, or to some homeless vet who’s living on the streets. They all have far greater need than any politician.

But I do not think I will be giving my money to Senator Obama this month, David. I’m mad at him at the moment, and likely will continue to be for some time.

Again, I would imagine many others who have contributed to the Obama campaign would say the same.

Check back in a month or so. By then McCain or Bush will almost certainly have said or done something so appalling that I may be more inclined to pull out my debit card and send some money your way.

But right now, I’m just going to be mad for a while.

Best wishes,

-jane doe

FISA musings - WTF, Barack?

Ever since the Senate vote on the FISA POS yesterday, I’ve been trying to puzzle it out, and I still don’t get it.

Why did Barack Obama vote for the bill?

What could possibly have motivated him to vote the way he did?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m plenty ticked off at all the other Democrats who caved to pressure from either the White House or (more likely) campaign contributors associated with the telecoms. They’re all on my shit list at the moment, and the Day of Retribution shall come, when they shall be Mocked Most Thoroughly for their total lack of backbone, intestinal fortitude, and/or principles.

I write a mean poison pen letter.*

But Obama’s decision to vote in favor of the bill completely mystifies me. I really cannot come up with a single rational explanation for his decision to support this bill.

It was a foregone conclusion that, no matter how he voted on the matter, McCain (who managed not to vote on the bill) will criticize his vote during the campaign. If he voted against it, he was soft on terrorism. If he voted for it, he was flip-flopping. (And by the way, McCain: Hello? Pot? Kettle? Glass houses?) So I’m not seeing much gain there.

Some have theorized that this is part of his effort to move a bit toward the center, since he is currently being portrayed by some on the right as being the senator who is furthest to the left on the political spectrum. But aside from those of us on the left who are active in these matters, my sense is that this issue hasn’t drawn a huge amount attention from the middle-of-the-road crowd. So the way I see it, he alienated his base on the left for very little potential gain in the middle.

And boy, has he ever alienated his base. From today’s Wall Street Journal, we have this little tidbit:

Obama’s own campaign Web site has become a hotbed of debate over his support for the compromise bill, spawning four groups in which opponents of Obama’s position vastly outnumber supporters—22,957 to 38. The “Get FISA Right” group blog on MyBarackObama.com was flooded with disappointed supporters after Wednesday’s vote, with more than 60 writing in within 90 minutes of the vote.

“Christopher from Cleveland” wrote, “All those people saying that we should relax, and take it easy, since it’s only one issue, are wrong because Barack is breaking his promise to us!”

“Dan in Holland,” said he was a Michigan voter who would no longer vote for Obama, adding “I just lost an enormous amount of respect for Mr. Obama and his vote on the FISA bill and the amendment to strip telecom immunity.”

Certainly, the blogosphere is up in arms about how he voted. Promises of no further campaign contributions and refusal to vote in November abound. (But really, are these people likely not to vote? Hell, no. When it comes down to it, I think we can all agree that what we do not need is for the next four years to look like the last eight years.)

Perhaps he fears a terrorist attack will take place on US soil between now and November. If there is one, a “no” vote on this measure really could hurt him in the polls. (See my previous posts on terror management theory for why.) So that might explain it.

There’s another possibility, and it’s a disturbing one. Maybe he actually wanted the measure to pass. Maybe he wanted to have that warrantless wiretapping ability should he win the election in November.

For the record, I think that the last option is pretty unlikely. I don’t believe we’ve all misread him that badly. I don’t want to believe that.

Still, with his vote on this issue, I think he’s changed the dynamic in the race a bit. It was nice having a candidate we could get excited about, instead of feeling like we were voting for the lesser of two evils. And now, I think a lot of us are going to be asking the question, “What else is he going to change his position on?”

Hopefully, by this November, he’ll have reassured us all a bit in that regard. There’s plenty of time between now and then to convince us that he’s still the leader we saw in the primaries.

But we’re not going to forget about this. He voted to betray the constitution, just like everyone else who voted yes on that goddamn bill. He sold us out like the rest of them.

-jane doe

* Hey, I’m a graduate student of limited means, living in Redstatesville, which is a drive of approximately thirteen and two-thirds cassette tapes** from Washington, D.C. (if you allow for traffic). My response options are somewhat limited. Sometimes a Strongly Worded Letter is the best I can manage.

** Some people measure travel distance in miles. I measure it in music. Though that’s becoming more difficult, because lately, on long drives, I listen to my iPod instead of cassette tapes, and that’s just not very convenient as a measure of distance, because you have to count actual songs which is kind of a pain. On the other hand, with gas prices going up the way they have, long roadtrips will soon become a thing of the past, so the methodology for calculating distances becomes kind of moot.