How you’d take the principles of sortition and make them work in today’s world strikes me as difficult.

My proposal at this point is quite simple: use random selection instead of elections to appoint the members of congress (initially one chamber).

Ford’s case against Obama on Iraq rests on two indictments. First, the 2002 speech wasn’t on Obama’s website in June 2003. Not something I’d defend, or want to. The response Ford quotes from Obama certainly smells of weasel; how badly this dents the halo is a judgement call. Second, his comments in 2004. In the middle of an election campaign, both of the names on the Democratic ticket had voted for the war. Obama chose not to say they’d got it wrong. Instead he said that he’d called it differently from them with the information he had, but that they’d had a different picture sitting where they were. In short, he had the back of his party’s candidates. The fact that Bill Clinton later used that against him smells worse than weasel. Kerry, note, endorses Obama. So by all means insert those two correctives into the campaign’s airbrushed timeline – I’d say Obama still comes out looking pretty good.

By far the most interesting link though is your post on sortition. I’m with you on the drawbacks of representative democracy, which is why I trotted out that hoary Churchill quote earlier in the thread. My one concern is that your functioning example – Athens – was a small city state run by an elite of citizens, underpinned by a disenfranchised mass of women and slaves. How you’d take the principles of sortition and make them work in today’s world strikes me as difficult.
It seems the closest we have nowadays is Frank effing Luntz. Which means you still have a long long row to hoe, and I wish you luck.

I prefer a much narrower defintion than you do. I think #36 covers it pretty well, but basically I think the term gets much of its descriptive, pejorative power from its origins with a sleazebag like Morris and its close association with the dispiriting Clinton/Gingrich period. To broaden it out to include anything that doesn’t map precisely onto party divisions robs it of meaning.

My reply has 4 links in it and so was caught in moderation.

Among other things, I was asking: if you are unhappy with my definition of triangulation, how would you define it?

If you stretch words too much they sag, and sense falls out of them.

I thought my definition was the standard one. How would you define triangulation?

I have to say I don’t hear the anti-progressive pitch you’re telling me Obama’s making. Are you absolutely sure these dog whistles you’re hearing aren’t just a sinus problem?

I agree with Glen Ford’s take on this matter: FAIR, Democracy Now!, Black Agenda Report.

As for who to give my vote to, I don’t put much thought into the matter: elections are just an oligarchic ploy anyway.

Triangulation means adopting elements from the traditional positions of both parties.

I have to say I don’t hear the anti-progressive pitch you’re telling me Obama’s making. Are you absolutely sure these dog whistles you’re hearing aren’t just a sinus problem?
At least there’s a candidate for you on Tuesday who’s attempting to counter Obama’s appeal to independents by turning out the base. But I’m guessing you hate her too, which means you’re screwed. You have my sympathy, but I’m also guessing you’d tell me where to stick it. Seems like your only hope is for Nader to get in.

Run, Ralph, run!

What does Obama see when he looks at Reagan? A successful presidency.

Exactly. What does a progressive see when he looks at Reagan? A total failure for the American people. Speaking of Reagan in positive terms (“dynamism”, “accountability”), and of the “excesses of the 60’s and 70’s” does not bode well. Being able to apologetically parse Obama’s words or explain his actions may very well become a useful skill for his supporters if he becomes president.

Looking at your list of desired specifics, torture stood out because I did recall a statement – here it is.

[From the link:] Torture is how you set back America’s standing in the world, not how you strengthen it. It’s time to tell the world that America rejects torture without exception or equivocation. It’s time to stop telling the American people one thing in public while doing something else in the shadows. No more secret authorization of methods like simulated drowning.

This is typical Obama – high rhetoric with little of substance. Yes – we all hate torture, including Bush. Bush simply claims that waterboarding is not torture. It seems that Obama disagrees and would opt for different techniques – maybe he prefers stress positions, cold rooms and sleep deprivation. Even that is not clear, since Obama puts the emphasis on the matter of secrecy. It seems that if waterboarding is authorized officially rather than in secret, then he would not have much trouble with it.

Also note how the argument is cast in the usual terms of self-interest – even torture is rejected primarily not on the grounds that it is evil but on the grounds that it doesn’t pay for the U.S..

[Obama’s] campaign will by necessity be broad and inclusive. I can understand the frustration of those who believe he should be casting his net more narrowly over their own specific stretch of water. What I can’t accept is the slippage of meaning involved in using ‘triangulation’ as a term of abuse for someone trying to build a working coalition that extends beyond their party base.

Making your principles and policy plans clear is considered “casting the net narrowly”? To me, it is a matter of being honest with the voters.

Triangulation means adopting elements from the traditional positions of both parties. This is exactly Obama’s strategy, so I don’t see why you reject the term.

The bottom line is this: Obama may be an insincere, trying to lure anti-progressive voters to vote for a progressive candidate by pretending that his isn’t; or he may be sincere, trying to lure progressives to vote for an anti-progressive candidate by campaigning mostly on style and soft-selling his anti-progressive policy plans. You think it is the former. My fear is that he is sincere.

I honestly have no idea what changes in policy are going to fall within the mandate for change – do you?

You make a good point: when you take the various positions worked up for a primary campaign and put them side by side, does that give you a clear idea of how, say, the first hundred days of an administration are going to feel? What the priorities are going to be? You’ll notice I was careful to talk about the mandate being clear rather than anything else.

But beyond that you seem to be saying two other things. You suspect that when full clarity comes it’s going to be a disappointment because the available evidence points to Obama being a gutless, rudderless centrist. And you say that ‘triangulation’ is an accurate label for Obama’s appeal to Republicans. I disagree on both points.

Obama’s Reagan comments are actually useful in explaining why. For Obama, Reagan took a popular mood of disillusion and frustration, and presented himself as the solution. He did this persuasively enough to attract large numbers of Democrats into his winning coalition. What does Obama see when he looks at Reagan? A successful presidency. A lot of people choke on admitting this, but Reagan won two terms, the second in a 49-state landslide, and handed over to an anointed successor. He got his agenda through, and changed the country. What Obama doesn’t see is an ideological model, which is why the “party of ideas” ad that Hillary ran in Nevada is so deceitful.

The contrast Obama explicitly drew between Reagan and Clinton in terms of changing the country is true and fair. After 1992 there was an early period of incoherent idealism, tempered by compromise (Bob Woodward’s The Agenda is an interesting read, and points towards why Robert Reich is pro-Obama). This was dissipated by the botch Hillary made out of healthcare, and was swept away by the ‘94 midterms. After which, the Clintons embraced the Dick Morris model. Beset by opposition on all sides, beleaguered by crisis, dominated by agendas hatched elsewhere, they maneuvred tactically to split the difference between opposing forces. That is what triangulation is. It’s where the word comes from: the split difference is the third point on a triangle.

How does the Obama approach compare? Summarized brutally: take a broadly shared popular mood, channel this into a political movement expressed at the ballot box, and use the resulting majority to push through your reforms. This is the antithesis of triangulation.

Looking at your list of desired specifics, torture stood out because I did recall a statement – here it is. At the time it contrasted with both Bill and Hillary, who had each put the case for torture, using the ticking bomb argument. I understand they’ve since adjusted their views.

So there are some specifics out there.

Another example is healthcare. Krugman has tied his knickers in a knot about this, Steve above reckons it’s an example of running to the right, but Obama’s plan is very similar to Bradley’s, which Al Gore used in their primaries to paint Bradley as a head-in-the-clouds liberal fantasist. And it seems to me that Obama’s process arguments about the workings of Washington are in fact very relevant in attempting to judge at this distance the sort of outcome we’ll see on healthcare, and strengthen rather than weaken his credibility on this issue.

Specifics aside, Obama is pushing for a big majority – something approaching a double digit margin in the general. He believes, I think rightly, that Bush has made this possible. His campaign will by necessity be broad and inclusive. I can understand the frustration of those who believe he should be casting his net more narrowly over their own specific stretch of water. What I can’t accept is the slippage of meaning involved in using ‘triangulation’ as a term of abuse for someone trying to build a working coalition that extends beyond their party base.

I honestly have no idea what changes in policy are going to fall within the mandate for change – do you?

You make a good point: when you take the various positions worked up for a primary campaign and put them side by side, does that give you a clear idea of how, say, the first hundred days of an administration are going to feel? What the priorities are going to be? You’ll notice I was careful to talk about the mandate being clear rather than anything else.
But beyond that you seem to be saying two other things. You suspect that when full clarity comes it’s going to be a disappointment because the available evidence points to Obama being a gutless, rudderless centrist. And you say that ‘triangulation’ is an accurate label for Obama’s appeal to Republicans. I disagree on both points.
Obama’s Reagan comments are actually useful in explaining why. For Obama, Reagan took a popular mood of disillusion and frustration, and presented himself as the solution. He did this persuasively enough to attract large numbers of Democrats into his winning coalition. What does Obama see when he looks at Reagan? A successful presidency. A lot of people choke on admitting this, but Reagan won two terms, the second in a 49-state landslide, and handed over to an anointed successor. He got his agenda through, and changed the country. What Obama doesn’t see is an ideological model, which is why the “party of ideas” ad that Hillary ran in Nevada is so deceitful.
The contrast Obama explicitly drew between Reagan and Clinton in terms of changing the country is true and fair. After 1992 there was an early period of incoherent idealism, tempered by compromise (Bob Woodward’s The Agenda is an interesting read, and points towards why Robert Reich is pro-Obama). This was dissipated by the botch Hillary made out of healthcare, and was swept away by the ‘94 midterms. After which, the Clintons embraced the Dick Morris model. Beset by opposition on all sides, beleaguered by crisis, dominated by agendas hatched elsewhere, they maneuvred tactically to split the difference between opposing forces. That is what triangulation is. It’s where the word comes from: the split difference is the third point on a triangle.
How does the Obama approach compare? Summarized brutally: take a broadly shared popular mood, channel this into a political movement expressed at the ballot box, and use the resulting majority to push through your reforms. This is the antithesis of triangulation.
Looking at your list of desired specifics, torture stood out because I did recall a statement – here it is. At the time it contrasted with both Bill and Hillary, who had each put the case for torture, using the ticking bomb argument. I understand they’ve since adjusted their views.
So there are some specifics out there.
Another example is healthcare. Krugman has tied his knickers in a knot about this, Steve above reckons it’s an example of running to the right, but Obama’s plan is very similar to Bradley’s, which Al Gore used in their primaries to paint Bradley as a head-in-the-clouds liberal fantasist. And it seems to me that Obama’s process arguments about the workings of Washington are in fact very relevant in attempting to judge at this distance the sort of outcome we’ll see on healthcare, and strengthen rather than weaken his credibility on this issue.
Specifics aside, Obama is pushing for a big majority – something approaching a double digit margin in the general. He believes, I think rightly, that Bush has made this possible. His campaign will by necessity be broad and inclusive. I can understand the frustration of those who believe he should be casting his net more narrowly over their own specific stretch of water. What I can’t accept is the slippage of meaning involved in using ‘triangulation’ as a term of abuse for someone trying to build a working coalition that extends beyond their party base.

the Obama approach is to get a clear mandate for change by riding a grass-roots wave.
We can differ over whether that’s practical or naive.
What it isn’t is triangulation.

I honestly have no idea what changes in policy are going to fall within the mandate for change – do you? How soon are we going to be out of Iraq? When will he close Guantanamo and the black sites? Will he make a clear and firm stand on torture? How will he act to reverse the widening economic inequalities? And on and on.

The only thing that seems clearly within the mandate is changing the “style in Washington”, which seems to boil down to cozying up to the Republicans a-la Obama’s Reagan comments. Pure triangulation.

And that’s just one thing that is wrong with him.