November 2004 Archives
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When, oh when, did Rev. Jesse Jackson become a joke?
Jackson's always had a reputation as a show-boater. A guy who didn't do much work, took a lot of credit and was a little sloppy with the books. PUSH, his Chicago-based civil rights organization, has always been a little suspect. But Jackson could talk – his "Keep Hope Alive" speech to the Democratic Party is one of the better moments of political TV you're ever likely to see – and he could get folks going. PUSH got a bad wrap because Jackson insisted on sticking to out-of-date protest rituals – the boycott, the picket, the insistence on discrimination – and made no bones about the fact that corporations had to negotiate and sometimes pay PUSH, not their workers – to get out from under the allegations of racism that he brought to bear on their reputations. When he came to Silicon Valley, he got laughed out of town. Slowly, Jackson lost his audience.
Continue reading "Hope's Alive. Somewhere."Tue 11:13 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Joe Trippi's in today's Wall Street Journal chastising the Democratic Party for following the Democratic Leadership Council's move to the moderate middle. In essence, he says, Dean was right. And, by extension, of course, he was too.
Tue 11:05 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Wanna hear me squawk – about this and more -- in person and in public?
Inforum, a division of the San Francisco Commonwealth Club, is hosting a post-election forum, "America the Polarized: A Presidential Election Post-Mortem" next Thursday, Dec. 9 at club HQ down on Market Street here in San Francisco.
I'm probably in over my head. These guys have forgotten more about party politics than I'll ever learn. So you really should come. We're all gonna learn something. The panel's moderated by CNN's Carlos Watson and will feature a pollster, San Francisco's own David Binder, an activist, Richard Winger from Ballot Access News and a polisci prof, Robert Eisinger from the College of Lewis and Clark
Details are here.
Tue 10:59 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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A lot has been said but there's not really much going on – not yet – in the Supreme Court cases being heard today on shipping wine across state lines or permitting the distribution of marijuana for medical purposes. As a rule, it's silly to anticipate what the court will do based on the justices' questions or comments. The court is a committee and well, it behaves accordingly.
The pairing of the cases – the dope case is about state's rights to make laws that allow behavior considered illegal in other places, the booze case is takes a look at laws that make legal behavior illicit – is interesting. But it's nothing to get too excited about. Remember, it's a committee.
Continue reading "Booze and Dope"Mon 09:54 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Okay. Time for a Break.
We all need one. Politics From Left to Right will return after the weekend.
Have a good Thanksgiving. But first, since it's the season, some thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you for your financial support; subscriptions won't make me rich but they help keep this site up and running.
Thank you for your letters. Comments make the writing on this site smarter and tighter and better written.
Thanks for your time and attention. November is a banner month – again – for this site which means that stand alone journalism is catching on. I am more thankful than I can say.
Wed 12:52 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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There are some times when I just miss old-school politicians like Willie Brown.
Today is one of them. The San Francisco Chronicle's John King is back in the swing of things with a piece on the beleaguered Bay Bridge rebuilding project, the one that's taken what feels like a million years, cost a billion dollars and only just started construction. That one. King's making the case that public works projects like the bridge – which will span the San Francisco Bay from Yerba Buena Island to Oakland – should be attractive.
Continue reading "Oh, Beautiful"Tue 12:09 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Did you happen to catch the premier of KPCB-TV?
It ran last week on Charlie Rose. Taped at Google (a spectacularly successful Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers investment), it was a bunch of tech folks sitting around talking to Rose about the future.
It was quite the BS session. There wasn't a lot of news for anyone who's been rolling around Silicon Valley for the past few years and who understand that on this coast, venture capital firms are what law firms are in New York or Washington: Places where the smart and political savvy work so they can pool their resources and address books. But for New Yorkers, this was probably revolutionary stuff. They're still alive! My God! Honey, plug in the TiVo! The future -- it's here!
Continue reading "Brother From Another Planet"Mon 10:42 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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The idea of amending the constitution to let Arnold Schwarzenegger – or any of the 12 million people like him who were born outside the U.S. – become president is one that should be taken seriously.
Not because it's going to happen. It's far to early in this idea's little wacky-but-feasible lifecycle to make any predictions. Democratic opposition – he'd win the presidency in a walk – is stiff.
It should be taken seriously for a couple of reasons that have only a little bit to do with Schwarzenegger. First of all, the headquarters for the whole AmendForArnold she-bang is at 3000 Sand Hill Road. For those of you on the East Coast in politics this might not mean very much. For those of us on the West Coast with a more-than-passing acquaintance with things Silicon Valley, it speaks volumes.
Continue reading "Attention New Arrivals: Your Party is Waiting"Thu 03:07 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week over at eWeek, I'm writing about email.
The story sprang out of something I'm doing for my pals at the Personal Democracy Forum. It occurred to me that it's perfectly possible that members of Congress – particularly the Senate which is going to be the political crucible of the next two years for both parties – could start getting people to lobby directly on issues of causes. This isn't a big deal for us out here on the web. In the clubby 100-member U.S. Senate, it's nothing short of a revolution.
Continue reading "It's Not the Mail. It's the Message."Thu 09:04 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Politics From Left to Right is very honored this morning to have received some kind praise.
Professor Jay Rosen over there at the New York University School of Journalism has adopted the phrase "Stand Alone Journalism" and called it "clever." Now there's a man who knows the way to my heart.
So it's official. You're reading stand alone journalism. (As Prof. Rosen is a real live academic, I’m gonna adopt his punctuation from now on). This isn't just important for me; I mean it is but I'll get over it as soon as some nastygrams come my way.
It's important because using a new term to describe writing on the web – writing by folks who do it for a living – is a step away from this whole process being dominated by technology. It's a step toward acknowledging that what's done here has value.
So, thanks Jay. Thanks very much.
Thu 08:59 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Shy, quiet Phil Bronstein – he edits The San Francisco Chronicle – has been popping up on TV lately here in San Francisco in a series of ads devoted to telling area residents how much they need The Chron.
My favorite is where Phil suggests that a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley would read The Chron to find out about a start-up in Novato. If you need a demonstration how little folks in Old San Francisco, (which is really The Chron's core readership of 300,000 home-delivered newspapers), understand what's happening around them, this is it. Venture capitalist don't look for start-ups; start-ups search – night and day, under rocks and stones, through hell and half of Georgia – for venture capitalist. And they use the Internet, and gossip and connections and VentureWire, not the paper.
The sardonic fun and opportunity for cheap shots and smart cracks doesn't stop there. In this week's AdWeek Phil gives an interview about the ads and his career. Ya gotta read it all the way to the self-serving end where he describes himself as "Middle-aged. Curious. Naive." How would others describe him? "Amusing. Passionate. Shy," says Phil.
Really. I am not making this up. Shy. Phil. Now that's amusing. And, you know, you didn't read it in the Chron, now did you?
Link courtesy of Romenesko.
Tue 10:43 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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It's only been two weeks and they're calling Prop 71 – the ballot initiative that created a $3 billion stem cell research fund for California – the new gold rush. Worried local papers are already writing about companies headed West, looking for grant money. To get a slice of the pie, you have to be here. Which is why, in the short- and long-runs, this is a jobs measure.
The state's big research institutes – three of the biggest here in the Bay Area -- are warming their hands over the bond fire. Scientists from UCBerkeley, La Jolla's Salk Institute and Stanford University are among the appointments to the 29-member committee that will oversee how the grant money – some $300 million a year – is doled out. You can expect to see someone from USCF soon joining their ranks. As well as scientists from USDavis, UCLA and Irvine, too.
Criteria for the remaining appointments is pretty tightly defined by the ballot initiative itself with emphasis on folks familiar with science grant-making and oversight. So the monkey business should – that's "should" as in "might, if everyone behaves well" – stay to a minimum. There are 10 slots for "disease advocates" to be appointed by the legislature. That's where the tone and structure of the board may well be set. Patronage-like appointments will diminish the oversight board's seriousness. Supporters of Prop. 71 said it would take the politics out of science by creating a stable environment for research. We'll see about that.
UPDATE: See indeed. The Bee's Laura Mecoy weighs in with the latest set of appointments -- the UCs have weighed in -- she takes a look at the side-politics between Proposition 71 backer Robert Kline and the politicians doing the oversight committee appointments.
Tue 10:09 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Politicians hoping to make it from the local to the national stage have a series of hoops to jump through and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has successfully gotten through many of them. He is media savvy, politically and socially well-connected and well-off. He can raise money, he can get attention and he knows what to do with it. In supporting marriage for same-sex couples, he's demonstrated all this and more.
But Newsom is a less than great politician. This last election showed – for the second time – just how poorly Newsom handles an important aspect of his job: Making people do things they don't want to do.
Continue reading "Growing Pains"Mon 10:26 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Damn.
I thought they'd go after our money. But, no Big Media has decided to go after the reliability and accuracy of "the blogosphere, as it's come to be known."
That sort of phrasing – snooty The New York Times boilerplate – shows up again and again in Tom Zeller Jr.'s front page piece on voter fraud theories and the speed at which they spread on-line. Zeller doesn't bother to cite the work of MysterPollster, who worked hard to make everyone understand how polling works or, in this case, didn't. Nor does Zeller talk about the folks who declined to cite exit polls or who have – eyeing the math and believing that a concession speech is indeed a concession – said that nothing would be changed even if the fraud charges were all true.
Continue reading "How Rumors Get Started...."Fri 10:42 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week, over at eWeek.com I'm talking – again – about Sen. Arlen Specter. He's in big trouble. And if you're not crazy about Hollywood's attitude toward copyright – I'm talking to you Larry Lessig – you might want to consider what is to be done about the ugly political fight that's looming in the U.S. Senate. The web has a lot of political power and right now it's being used to corner a man whose moderate politics aren't new or unreasoned.
I've already suggested that you Liberal Democrats send Specter a few bucks. And yes, I am well aware that this is the man who disgraced and ridiculed Anita Hill. That, my friends, is how far we've come.
Thu 04:33 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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There's been a lot of talk on the web thanks to Doc Searls' kind words and pointers about the piece below. So let me make a few clarifications. These are questions that have come up before.
Progressive libertarians are not a political party. They are a political movement that's already well underway and it is very much an open question which political party will get their energy, money and thinking. It's easiest to see here in California where we have a governor who embraces the idea of bipartisan co-operation. Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't much of a partisan player; he'd rather schmooze the opposition to death or play movie star and stomp 'em. And while, yes, he's called the Democrats "losers" – which is, by the way, technically accurate – he has a number of 'em in his administration. Other politicians who think like he does include Silicon Valley's Steve Westly , a Democrat, who supported the unsuccessful open primary measure, Steve Poizner, the Republican who ran for the assembly in the valley and Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, whose relationship with the San Francisco's business community is strained but not broken.
Continue reading "Who You Calling Progressive?"Thu 09:37 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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It's been a week and Democrats are in full self-pity mode. This being the party of Bill Clinton, former self-justifier in chief, it could last a while. Enjoy the peace, an all-party civil war is on the way.
Barring a miracle of reconciliation and the complete departure of the family Clinton from the Democratic Party, leadership will spend the next few years in the Democratic WayBack Machine. Hillary Clinton is positioned to claim the party's nomination for 2008. Word is that Harold Ickes, one of her close advisors, will take over the Democratic National Committee replacing Bill's close friend, Terry McAuliffe. McAuliffe, of course, is the guy who engineered the bruising early primary schedule that gave us a seemingly never-ending campaign season.
Continue reading "Red On Red. Blue on Blue"Tue 10:32 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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It's painful to admit but Mickey Kaus is right about the need for a full-on investigative piece about the various rumors about voter fraud and election tampering floating around in Ohio and Florida.
I'm betting Warren County – where they cited 'homeland security' and locked down the elections office or all the counties in Florida that were supposed to be heavily Democratic that turned up Republican not to mention all the funny business in Broward – don't have enough votes to make a different. This election was close but it wasn't that close and even if real serious irregularities are found, Ohio and Florida's state governments aren't going to hurry to adjust them, are they?
It's probably worth pointing out that John Kerry conceded to avoid this sort of second-guessing. That's working about as well as the rest of his campaign strategies, no?
Mickey didn't assign the story so I will: John Harwood at The WSJ, this is a job for you.
Tue 10:28 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This is how screwy San Francisco's instant run-off voting really is: It's so screwy you can't even build a good contest around it. Well, wait. You can build a good contest. You just have to constantly revise the winner's list.
Because of the various changes in the voting machine and tabulation software, Usual Suspects Alex Clemens has now announced five – that's one, two, three, four, five – different winners to his contest to name the first-cut vote tallies received by winners. And the way things are going, he might have a few more awards to give away before the day is done.
Continue reading "IRV Debacle"Fri 10:54 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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A few weeks ago, sage and experienced journalist that I am, I predicted a raft of Big Media stories about the "death of blogging." I thought they'd show up mid-month and picked the New York Times business section to carry the harbingers of doom.
Silly me. The first "wither Blogging" story has already appeared in Business Week. Here's the question the story doen't answer:
But can the blog business survive without a Presidential election and gaffes by mainstream media firing up the Internet masses? Skeptics wonder, particularly since some blog sites damaged their credibility when they jumped the gun and erroneously predicted Senator John Kerry would win the election.
Here's the sad part: They're just getting started.
Fri 10:44 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week's eWeek column is about all the good things that President George W. Bush's re-election means for tech folks. It's a good-sized list that focuses on personal income. Basically if you're rich – and that's most of Silicon Valley with you money in stocks and real estate – you're going to do better. If you invest in companies, if you run one, if you own one, you're going to do very well.
But if you've got a job that pays less than $150,00 a year, well, things are a little different. The various programs the Bush administration is proposing to let wealthier folks defer taxable income aren't going to be as easy to access.
Fri 10:35 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Can we stop with the bullshit, please?
Can we stop with the emails and the queries and the 'whatdoyou' think notes circulating the paranoid fantasy that the exit polls released Tuesday at 3 p.m. were accurate and the final voting tallies were not? This isn't true. And even if it is, there's nothing to be done about it. Kerry conceded. Please read what MysteryPollster has to say about polls and polling and remember that since you didn't take a statistics class because you "aren't good at math" you really don't know what you're talking about. To quote tough guy Barry Diller: "They won, we lost. Next."
Continue reading "Reality Bites"Thu 06:46 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Did San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom sink Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry?
A few readers seem to think so.
"I nominate Newsom as the new Democratic goat of 2004," writes Mike Duffy. He had more to say:
That gay marriage stunt that Gavin Newsome pulled last year mobilized the Christian evangelicals to vote family values in Ohio. The "defend traditional marriage" initiative in Ohio (Proposition 1) was the single biggest reason that conservative Ohioans came out to vote. It even scored higher than terror. Kerry ought to give Newsome his thoughts on the matter.
Regular reader Dave Zinman, a moderately Liberal Democrat here in San Francisco, wasn't quite that caustic.
Continue reading "Blaming Newsom"Thu 09:55 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Over at the Washington Monthly, Amy Sullivan has a very good post about religion and morality, Republicans and Democrats and how you can't assume one is necessarily the other.
She is urging – and I want to join her – that those of us over here on the Left to stop lumping religious folks together in one big politically conservative stereotype that's out to set the clock back. It's condescending. Not to mention inaccurate and wrong.
To be religious is not necessarily to embrace the belief that you must foist it off on others. The teaching and support of religion – proselytizing, using the state to enact laws to hold one set of beliefs as superior to the other, the instruction of those belief in public institutions – is not, by the laws of this country, acceptable. But religion has a place in public life in this country and it always has. The anti-war and civil rights movements started in churches and were led by religious men: William Sloan Coffin and Martin Luther King. The 18th Century Abolition movement was run by northern preachers. Clearly, President George Bush has a conservative Christian's view of the world and his role in it and I am one of those who believe that his faith reinforces his personal and familial arrogance. That makes him a bad president not necessarily a bad man. The idea that religion can provide solace and refuge for people in times of trouble – which is how Bush uses it when he campaigns -- is not one we should unanimously condemn because it's not the way we see the world.
Continue reading "Having Faith"Thu 09:49 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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I believe we can call the past few days around here the triumph of hope over experience. That's how Dr. Johnson described his second marriage so it's doubly appropriate.
Make no mistake: John Kerry had to concede. If he had won after all the legal wrangling it would have been a hollow victory. If he had lost it would have been a disaster for the Democrats, one they'd never get over. His horribly inappropriate campaign - this is not a well-liked man -- hurt the party, a long, draw-out defeat would have demolished it.
Continue reading "Finishing in Style"Wed 09:21 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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The New York Times didn't ask me – hard to believe, no? – but if it had, I would have told them that the most important story of this election isn't the 60 Minutes memo or the way John Kerry belittled Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. It's not the pronunciation of Lambeau Field or the Republican's failure to dump Vice President Dick Cheney.
No, the biggest story of this election is the increased attention and interest that Americans are showing in politics. That attention has done wonders for stand-alone journalists like me. Without you – and your interest in this stuff – I wouldn't be here. Nor would any of the folks whose opinions appear in today's Times.
Continue reading "Baby, It's You"Tue 09:47 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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There is no excuse.
None whatsoever.
Go now. Go vote.
Tue 08:41 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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John Markoff has a simply amazing story on the front page of today's NYTimes business section.
It's about computer scientist Steve – not his real name, you can bet on that – Chen and his recent decision to commute between his new office in China and his home in San Jose California. That's right, he commutes. The Chinese offered to help him build his dream supercomputer. So, well, he followed his bliss, so to speak.
For the West Coast, that's only a 9 hour plane ride, like going to Paris from New York. But, culturally, Chen and his compatriots in bi-cultural living are breaking all kinds of new ground. This is one of the odder features of the 21st Century, one we still haven't really grappled with. When you leave your native country, even if you do so as a young man as Chen did, you do not need to forsake it, even if it was once hostile to the very ideas of the land you have called home for years. That's a new development and for U.S. politics toward Asia -- China in particular – and it's hugely important.
Continue reading "The Great Cray Of China"Mon 02:36 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Things are busy around here, that's for sure.
Tomorrow, Election Day, I hope to be posting here and perhaps over at the Personal Democracy Forum, a site devoted to exploring the increasingly familiar but now somewhat awkward relationship between technology and politics. Regular readers of this site can expect more grumbling about polls which I consider somewhere between a nuisance and the bane of all reporters' existences. But my talented colleagues at PDF have lots of other things to say on a broader range of issues. If you're after the nuts and bolts of how this stuff can work, PDF is worth a visit.
Wednesday morning bright and early – okay, so it's 10 a.m. PST – I'll be moderating a panel in Sacramento, "Politics It's Beyond Left and Right." Nice of them to think of me, no? The chat will be part of the California Professional Businesswoman's Forum at the Sacramento Convention Center and I'll be chatting with San Francisco D.A. Kamala Harris, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kim Belshe and Secretary of Business, Transportation and Housing Sunne Wright McPeak. I'm looking forward to this as a way to look at how California politics – and politicians – will affect national politics and policy over the next four years.
Saturday I'll be in Palo Alto for Dave Winer's BloggerCon III. This promises to be a pretty interesting event in part because never-shy Winer has timed it for maximum Big Media exposure. My bet is that a lot of traditional reporters will be walking around trying to do the "what blogging meant to the election" story as a curtain-raiser to "why blogs are dead" which is a prequel to "why blog advertising has gone away." I'll be the cranky lady in the corner with the BS detector.
Mon 11:49 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
