Half Changed World

I made a couple of calls to women in Texas tonight for Obama, and the people I reached sounded pretty grumpy.  Maybe I just had a bad streak, but they just didn’t want to hear from me.  By contrast, when I was calling into Super Tuesday states, even the people who were going to vote for Clinton sounded happy with their options and willing to talk.

I’m guessing that tomorrow’s going to be a split decision.  Clinton will take Ohio and Rhode Island; Obama will take Texas (at least by delegates) and Vermont.  And I think that means the campaigns will slog on to Pennsylvania.

I’m a self-admitted political junkie, but I’ve run out of enthusiasm for this primary.  I like both candidates, and worry that the infighting is becoming too destructive.  I want Obama to win the primary, but I want a Democrat to win in November even more.

Head over to www.everyonegetssick.org and join the online rally for paid sick days.

Because you shouldn’t have to choose between taking care of your sick kid and having the money to pay your rent.  And from a public health perspective, you really don’t want the people who are preparing and serving your food, or loading your groceries at the supermarket, to be dragging themselves into work even though they’re sick because they can’t afford to stay home.

If you live in DC, check out www.dcsneezes.org and give your city councilmember a call.  They’re voting on the DC Accrued Sick and Safe Leave Act on Tuesday.

And if you’re in Illinois, read this post to learn how you can help.

Here’s the NY Times editorial, Catching Up on Family Values, from earlier this week.

Thought I’d share two sites where I’ve been wasting far too much time:

• Real Clear Politics has tons of poll data, for Wisconsin, Ohio, Texas and beyond.  Also head to head matchups between Clinton and McCain and Obama and McCain.
• Democratic Convention Watch has the best info on superdelegates — who they are, and whether they’ve committed.

Oooh, via Bitch PhD, here’s another fun site, an Implicit Association Test for the presidential candidates.  I took it, and it found that I had strongly positive attitudes towards Obama, with Huckabee, Clinton, and McCain (in that order) lower down.  I think it correctly captured the fact that the campaign has made me feel less favorably towards Clinton — I need to keep reminding myself that I think she’d be a darn good president.  And I’m not surprised that it said I like Huckabee more than McCain, even though I’d actually vote for McCain if I had to choose between the two.  I like Huckabee quite a bit, although I think he’d be a terrible president.

"I wanted to spend more time with my family" is the standard cliche of the day for explaining why you quit a high powered job when the real reason is that you were going to be fired if you didn’t get your behind in gear.  Occasionally, it’s actually true.

Matthew Yglesias doesn’t believe that Patti Solis Doyle really quit because of family obligations.  I agree that it would be incredibly unprofessional for her to quit at this stage of the race, and the idea that she’d do it because her six year old said he wanted Daddy is pretty ludicrous.  (Just in case it is true, here’s some unsolicited parenting advice: get over it.  Kids are good at yanking chains, and it doesn’t mean a thing.  T’s been the at-home parent since D was 4 months old, and there are times when the boys demand him and there are times when he might as well be chopped liver.)

The comment thread over there raises some interesting questions.  Is it anti-feminist for her to use this excuse?  Does it make it harder for other woman professionals with small children to be hired into positions of responsibility?  Is it an attempt to play for sympathy with working mothers?  Why go into this level of detail when no one is going to believe you anyway?

***

Today’s poem on The Writer’s Almanac is "Sestina for the Working Mother" by Deborah Garrison.

Sestina for the Working Mother

No time for a sestina for the working mother.
Who has so much to do, from first thing in the morning
When she has to get herself dressed and the children
Too, when they tumble in the pillow pile rather than listening
To her exhortations about brushing teeth, making ready for the day;
They clamor with "up" hugs when she struggles out the door.

Every time, as if shot from a cannon when she shuts the door.
She stomps down the street in her city boots, slipping from mother
Mode into commuter trance, trees swaying at the corner of a new day
Nearly turned, her familiar bus stop cool and welcoming in the morning.
She hears her own heart here, though no one else is listening,
And if the bus is late she hears down the block the voices of her children

Bobbing under their oversized backpacks to greet other children
At their own bus stop. They too have come flying from the door,
Brave for the journey, and everyone is talking and no one is listening
As they head off to school. The noisy children of the working mother,
Waiting with their sitter for the bus, are healthy and happy this morning.
And that’s the best way, the mother knows, for a day

To begin. The apprehension of what kind of day
It will be in the world of work, blissful without children,
Trembles in the anxious and pleasurable pulse of the morning;
It has tamped her down tight and lit her out the door
And away from what she might have been as a mother
At home, perhaps drinking coffee and listening

To NPR, what rapt and intelligent listening
She’d do at home. And volunteering, she thinks, for part of the day
At their school-she’d be a playground monitor, a PTA mother!
She’d see them straggle into the sunshine, her children
Bright in the slipstream, and she a gracious shadow at the school door;
She would not be separated from them for long by the morning.

But she has chosen her flight from them, on this and every morning.
She’s now so far away she trusts someone else is listening
To their raised voices, applying a Band-Aid, opening the door
For them when the sunshine calls them out into the day.
At certain moments, head bent at her desk, she can see her children,
And feels a quick stab. She hasn’t forgotten that she is their mother.

Every weekday morning, every working day,
She listens to her heart and the voices of her children.
Goodbye! they shout, and the door closes behind the working mother.

While we’re waiting for word from DC and Maryland on the primary results, I wanted to make a plug for the Stanford Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality‘s new magazine, Pathways: a magazine on poverty, inequality, and social policy.  The first issue features essays on how to end poverty from Edwards, Clinton and Obama (McCain and Romney were invited to participate, but declined).  But I think the rest of the magazine is even better.

• It includes the best summary for a general audience I’ve read of the evidence on the impact of housing vouchers on economic opportunity.  DeLuca and Rosenbaum explain the differences between the overwhelmingly positive results for the families who received vouchers under Gautreaux, a court-ordered remedy in a desegregation case, and the more mixed results for families who received vouchers under Moving to Opportunity, a random assignment evaluation modeled after Gautreaux, and make some reasonable arguments about the lessons that policymakers should draw.
• Robert Frank (of The Winner Take All Society) explains why inequality is bad for rich people too, and argues for a progressive consumption tax.
• Charles Murray (of the Bell Curve) makes an case largely grounded in Frank’s reasoning for why interventions aimed at increasing opportunity for low-income families won’t reduce inequality.
• Becky Blank, codirector of the National Poverty Center at UMichigan, reviews the three Democratic candidates’ proposals and concludes that they "all have multifaceted and serious anti-poverty plans.  Anyone concerned with poverty issues could happily vote for any of them.  Edwards has made poverty a centerpiece issue for his campaign from the beginning; Clinton has the best early childhood proposals; Obama is the most thoughtful on jobs for disadvantaged youth and urban change and (for my money) the most creative in putting new policy ideas on the table, such as low-cost Internet service in poor neighborhoods.  But all of them understand that the measure of this country is not just the size of its GDP or the wealth of its richest citizens."

The whole magazine is available as .pdfs, and hard copy subscriptions are free.  Check it out.

Today we took the boys to Obama’s "town meeting" at TC Williams high school.  Having dealt with their restlessness for the hour we waited for tickets on Friday night, we were a little more prepared today, and brought T’s video ipod, Catch the Match, and some snacks.  The boys played on the grass for a while, and eventually we got to go inside.  (I’m very glad that the brutal wind that is blowing now held off while we were waiting — I think we’d have given up and turned around if we had to stand in it for long.)

The crowd was polite to the other speakers, but everyone clearly saw them as just something to be got through before the main attraction.  Tim Kaine spoke for a few minutes in Spanish, and then explained that the basic translation of all that was "he’s a great guy."  I don’t think Obama’s speech was one of his peak performances, but it still rocked the crowd.  Someone I heard walking out said that it was basically his standard stump speech.

People sometimes complain that Obama is short on specifics, but the speech had plenty of specific proposals — tax credits for college tuition, linked to community service, rebates of payroll taxes — although they rushed by too fast for me to catch most of the details.  Frankly, I was waiting for the soaring rhetoric part of the speech, which he did eventually get to, arguing that hope doesn’t mean naiveté, but is the driving force that motivates the work needed to make change.

There was some time for questions.  People asked about his policies towards South America and Africa, which gave him a chance to talk about engagement with the world.  A man who identified himself as a gay veteran asked about "don’t ask, don’t tell."  Obama thanked him for his service, and said he opposed the policy.

A woman from Hawai’i said that her young son was enthusiastic about Obama, but her husband was out campaigning for Clinton, and she was torn, and asked him why she should vote for him.  I thought Obama’s answers were interesting.  He began by saying that Clinton is smart and capable, and would be a vast improvement over the current president.  He then offered 4 reasons why she should vote for him rather than Clinton:

1. His ability to bring people together — he argued that while both he and Clinton support universal health care, he has more of an ability to bring together a "working majority" to get it passed.
2. His desire to change the way business is done in Washington and challenge the special interests — he cited his refusal to take PAC money, and the Congressional ethics bill that he cosponsored.
3. His "straight talk"  — the example he gave is that he gave his speech on setting fuel economy standards in front of auto industry executives in Detroit.  He contrasted this with Clinton’s equivocation on the bankruptcy "reform" bill, which she said that she wanted to fail even though she voted for it.*
4. His ability to change how the US is seen internationally, because of who he is, and his experience having lived in Indonesia and having family in Africa.

The Obama campaign has posted video of the response if you want to hear him say it himself, rather than my paraphrase.

What’s striking about that list is that there aren’t really any policy differences between him and Clinton on it — which I think is right.  While there are some policy differences between the two, they’re awfully small in the scheme of things.  Ezra Klein had a nice piece last week about the style differences between the two.

I wanted to take the boys both because it was the only realistic way for T and I to both attend on short notice, and because I do think this campaign could be a historic moment for them to remember.   I don’t know how much they got out of it.  They were generally well behaved, although N was clearly fading by the end of the speeches.  They both enjoyed chanting "Obama" and "We can do it" with the crowd.  D wanted to know what "don’t ask, don’t tell" is, which resulted in a very long answer to a short answer.

* I was moderately amused that Obama went on for a bit about how awful
this bill was, while Congressman Moran (who was one of the major
sponsors of the bill and had just endorsed him) sat in the front row
behind him and looked at the floor.

I just got the boys to bed and went to make some phone calls in support of Obama, and got a message that their servers are overwhelmed by the number of hits they’re getting, and please try back in a little while.

***

There’s been a lot of endorsements in the Presidential election, and generally I’m not particularly moved by them.  But, in thinking of why I support Obama, I realized that two endorsements have made a big difference to me.

One is from someone I’m not going to name, as I don’t think he’s made a public statement of his endorsement.  (Because he’s the director of an organization that doesn’t make endorsements.)  But he’s from Illinois, and has devoted his life to anti-poverty work.  He worked with Obama when he was in the state senate, and he says he’s the real deal.  His support convinces me that there’s substance to go with the soaring rhetoric.

The other is Karen Mulhauser, who is a former executive director of NARAL.  She’s also the "fairy godmother" of the Women’s Information Network.  WIN was founded in 1989 by young women who had worked on the Dukakis campaign and then came to Washington DC and tried to find political jobs, and didn’t have much luck.  They went to Karen and said "we need something to help us compete with the ‘old boys network.’" And Karen opened up her address book for them, and WIN was born.  And now there’s been a full generation of young women who have had doors opened to them because of WIN.  Karen’s endorsement gives me the confidence that no, I’m not betraying my feminist ideals by supporting Obama.

• I’m very pleased to see the last of Giuliani. The NY Times editorial anti-endorsement was harsh, but reflects the opinion of most New Yorkers.
• As recently as this week, I was getting emails from the Edwards campaign saying that he was in it until the convention.  He’s saying that there hasn’t been a change in Elizabeth Edwards’ health, so I wonder what made him drop out now.
• Given the rules of the Democratic primaries — with no winner-take-all primaries — I do still think it’s possible that we’re going to wind up heading into the convention with neither Clinton nor Obama having secured enough delegates to win.  It’s a lot less likely with Edwards out of the race, so maybe that’s why he dropped out.  It’s not like — even with a hung convention — the Democratic party could plausibly bypass the top two vote getters to select a white man as their nominee.  Not without riots.
• Kevin Drum thinks that McCain has a problem because the Republican base isn’t thrilled by him.  But the polls suggest that McCain has a edge on both Clinton and Obama, but Romney loses to either one. The polls don’t show it, but I think Clinton has to have a harder time against him than Obama, because she’ll motivate the Republican base to come out to vote against her.
• It’s going to be quite an election year here in the 11th District of Virginia, with open House and Senate seats, as well as the presidential election.

It looks like Congressional leaders and the President are going to be meeting today to hammer out an agreement on the outlines of an economic stimulus package.  If you can possibly send an email or make a call to your representative and Senator this morning, and emphasize that any tax rebate should include everyone who pays payroll taxes, not just those who owe federal income tax, it could make a big difference.

Most people’s eyes glaze over when they start to read about the details of the stimulus proposals, so let me try to explain what’s going on and why it matters.

The key thing to understand is that this is a case where making sure that the rebate reaches low-income families is both the efficient and the just thing to do.  Liberals spend a lot of time arguing about the value of justice when it conflicts with efficiency, but there’s no conflict here, and this point isn’t getting enough attention.

• Efficiency:  If people get their rebate checks and stick them in the bank, this doesn’t actually stimulate the economy.  It only makes a difference when people spend their money, putting more money into the pocket of the people they’re buying from, and so on and so forth.  (This is in fact the argument behind Bush’s much maligned response to 9/11, encouraging people to go out and shop…)  And economists overwhelmingly agree that low-income people are more likely to go out and spend the additional money, because they’re more likely to have urgent unmet needs.  Upper-income people are more likely to stick the money in the bank.  All the news stories use a big screen TV as the example of what people might buy with the rebate, but upper income people are more likely to already have a big TV.  And especially if they think a recession is coming, it makes sense to build up a bit of a cushion.  (The CBO report is also unequivocal that business tax credits are inefficient stimulus, but the Dems seem to have already folded on that front.)
• Justice: You can make reasonable moral arguments that it makes sense to spread this windfall payment out equally among everyone in the US, or that it makes sense to give more to those who are most in need.  But what the Bush proposal would do is give less to those who are most in need and most to those who don’t need it.  Their claim is that they’re giving it to "everyone who pays taxes" but that’s a lie.  They want to only include people who pay federal income taxes, which totally excludes a huge chunk of low-income families — who do pay payroll taxes (for Medicare and Social Security), sales taxes, etc.  Moreover, families who are in the 10 percent bracket would only get a partial credit.

This should be a no-brainer.  But the Administration is proving once again that it places knee-jerk opposition to progressive taxation over common sense, and the Democrats in Congress haven’t consistently shown the backbone needed to stand up.  So call in this morning and demand a stimulus package that is both just and efficient.

Updated 1/24/2008:  Bush, Pelosi and Boehner announced their agreement today.  The good news is that at least a partial rebate — $300 — will go to anyone who earned at least $3000 (unclear what the reference year is, or the phase-in range, or any of that).  The bad news is that as part of the compromise, the House Democrats both accepted business tax credits that none of the economists think will do any good and gave in on demands for extended unemployment insurance and a temporary increase in food stamp benefits.  On the Senate side, the Dems are at least making noises about holding the line on including an extension of unemployment benefits.  So if you’re just reading this, and are inclined to make some calls, that’s probably the issue to focus on.

Blogging while I watch the election results come in from New Hampshire.  Clinton’s still leading Obama with a bit under 1/3 of the results in so far.  If she wins, it will be really interesting to see the analyses of why the polling over the last few days was so far off.

The Steinem piece on Hillary has been getting a lot of play today.  I think she’s completely right that Hillary has been the object of a great deal of sexism — from the constant refrain that she’s "shrill" and "strident" to the obsession with her appearance and the damned if you do, damned if you don’t coverage of her emotions.

That said, I do think the campaign has highlighted the degree to which
sexism continues to permeate the environment, at a time when overt
racism has become clearly unacceptable, at least in high-level
politics.  Obama’s been the subject of some nasty anti-Muslim comments
(even though he’s Christian), but other than the people who keep
calling him "articulate",* there’s been very little racism in the
campaign so far.  (But I still think racism probably does more to hold
people back on the US overall than sexism.  Some other day, I need to
blog about the Pew findings on race, gender and intergenerational
mobility)

[CNN just said that their exit polling is showing more support for Clinton from women in NH than they saw in IA.  If so, I think that may well be driven by the blatant sexism of the news coverage of the past few days — from the headlines, I thought that she had burst into tears and been unable to continue, rather than having a hitch in her voice.]

But I think Steinem’s overstating the degree to which sexism is driving the results so far, as opposed to people’s real enthusiasm for Obama.  Yes, it’s improbable that a woman with Obama’s bio could be a serious candidate for president. But it’s also totally improbably that he’s a serious candidate for president.  And it’s not fair, but that’s part of his appeal.

I also think that when Steinem includes "powerful fathers" along with "sex, race, money.. and paper degrees" in the things that shouldn’t be driving our choices, it’s more than a bit disingenuous for her not to include "famous husbands" in the litany.

*  "Articulate" is a compliment when you’re talking about a teenager, or someone you’re interviewing for their first job.  When applied to an adult who has been elected to political office, it’s either damning with faint praise or code for "he doesn’t sound black."

[AP and CNN are calling New Hampshire for Clinton.  Judging by my disappointment, I’m officially off the fence.]