Democracy, Big-D
By Frank Gruber
A consensus formed around the country last week that Barack Obama's
17.4-point win over Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin made his nomination
inevitable. The fact that Mr. Obama overwhelmed Ms. Clinton in a state
that is 90 percent white with a lot of working people was more evidence
that given enough time to reach voters, Mr. Obama is unstoppable.
The day after the primary my son, 18, who was a precinct captain for
Mr. Obama in the February 5 primary, asked at dinner what my wife and
I thought would be the ultimate meaning of the election.
Well, we said, we won't know until November. Choosing between Mr. Obama
and Ms. Clinton won't mean much unless the Democratic nominee -- presumptively
now Mr. Obama -- wins the general election. But then, with somewhat
bated breath, and touching the wood that is our dining room table, I
ventured that if Mr. Obama pulls it off, it will be momentous because
it will represent what didn't happen in 1968.
Then America was also mired in an unwise and unpopular war, but the
then best candidate for change, Robert Kennedy, who was on his way to
the nomination, was assassinated.
His killing had a drastic impact on the future of American politics.
It's hard to believe that he would not have picked up just a few more
votes than Hubert Humphrey did in November (Humphrey lost the popular
vote by only seven-tenths of a percent), and that he would have defeated
Richard Nixon. Perhaps I am engaging in prospective hagiography, but
in my version of counterfactual history RFK, not Ronald Reagan, would
have been the "transformative" American political figure of
the late 20th century.
A President Robert F. Kennedy would have reformed and revived the progressive
New Deal coalition between middle class liberals and workers; he would
have been able to explain to the latter why exiting Vietnam was not
unpatriotic, and he would have defused the need for the radical politics
that brought us President Reagan and created the coalition between conservative
corporate interests and Reagan Democrats over cultural issues that has
empowered Republican domination ever since.
So now we have Mr. Obama and Iraq. Hillary Clinton is losing this nomination
for various tactical reasons, but at the heart of her failure to close
the deal that looked inevitable before people started to caucus and
vote is that "Yea" vote she gave to authorizing the invasion
of Iraq. Meanwhile, Mr. Obama is trying to create a new version of the
New Deal coalition.
If Mr. Obama wins in November, over John McCain, it will be as if Robert
Kennedy won in 1968.
And the country seems ready to vote against the war. The important
numbers in the Wisconsin vote, which I have not seen discussed much
in the press or on the Internet, were not 646,007 and 452,795, respectively
the counts for Obama and Clinton, but rather 1,098,802 and 375,427.
The first number is the combined vote for the two Democrats, who both
want to get us out of Iraq, while the latter is the total vote for the
two pro-war Republicans, John McCain and Mike Huckabee.
Of all the votes cast for the major candidates in both parties, the
Democrats took nearly 75 percent. To put it another way, Hillary Clinton
may have lost dramatically to Barack Obama, but she can take some satisfaction
in the fact that in an open primary where voters can choose the party
primary they want to vote in on the day of the election she outpolled
the combined vote for the two Republicans 452,795 to 375,427.
Between now and November is a long time in politics, and a lot can
happen, but right now the big story is that Americans want the Republicans
out of power and the U.S. out of Iraq.
* * *
"One woman walked up to the microphone and let out an earsplitting
shriek that could have been the agonized cry of a tree being chainsawed.
"'We are not crazy tree huggers,' she told the council."
-- From the Lookout's article about the Santa Monica City Council's
decision not to designate the ficus trees on Second and Fourth Streets
as city landmarks.
"[Y]ou know, this is where we start getting into silly season"
-- Barack Obama, speaking at last Thursday night's debate in Texas
(but not about the ficus trees).
Jerry Rubin and Dan Jansenson, two of the organizers of Treesavers,
the group trying to stop the City of Santa Monica from removing about
fifty of the hundreds of ficus trees downtown, are two of my favorite
people in Santa Monica politics, and it thus pains me to say it, but
this tree thing has become ridiculous, or "silly" in current
political parlance.
There is nothing natural about those trees. They are not native to
Santa Monica nor the region. Trees like them of different species would
not even have been part of the natural environment here before "civilization."
Their existence on Second and Fourth streets is artificial, the product
of human beings who planted them there to enhance the pleasure people
experience as they walk those streets.
Now the City proposes to remove about one-third of the trees on those
six blocks and replace them two-for-one with new trees. Trees that in
forty years, when all the ficus have died or toppled over, will enhance
the pleasure of future Santa Monicans. (I doubt that Messrs. Rubin and
Jansenson, or myself for that matter, will be around at that time, but
I hope that someone then takes note of the Santa Monicans of the early
twenty-first century who were so forward thinking as to plant new trees.)
* * *
There was one side note to the City Council meeting on the ficus trees
that is worth comment. At the end of the public hearing Nina Fresco,
the Chair of the Landmarks Commission, spoke to the council to the effect
that while the commission could not make the findings to justify landmarking
the trees, the whole thing took up a lot of commission and staff time,
and that the people who love the trees should have had another route
to challenge the City's proposed action.
While Ms. Fresco and most of her colleagues should be commended for
voting not to designate the trees as landmarks, Ms. Fresco made to errors.
One is that the tree supporters lacked a route to voice their concerns.
The history of this project goes back years. There have been many meetings
and opportunities for input. If the Treesavers people had participated
in those meetings, then it's not likely that the original plan, which
called for all of the trees to be replaced, would have been adopted.
Even so, coming in late, the Treesavers were able to improve the plan
by causing the City to adopt a phased replacement policy.
This was a big and important victory for the Treesavers (and one of
the reasons I like Messrs. Rubin and Jansenson so much). But they were
not satisfied with victory, and now they are talking about chaining
themselves to trees.
The second point that Ms. Fresco missed is that it has been the actions
of her own commission that have encouraged Treesavers along with anyone
else opposed to a change in Santa Monica's existing physical state to
use the landmarks law to affect the City's land use policies.
After all, if the Landmarks Commission will designate a Quonset hut
as a landmark, why not a row of trees?
* * *
Injury report. I am happy to report to my readers that I am almost
completely recovered from my bike accident. In fact, this past week
I started cycling again (with a new helmet). Thanks for all the good
wishes.
A lot of people have asked me if I have recovered any memory of the
accident. The answer is no; the accident took place where Ocean Park
Boulevard crosses Eleventh Street; my last memory is east of Fourteenth.
I asked the neurologist about his when I saw him for my checkup a few
weeks after the accident. He said that I wouldn't get the memory back
and that, if I think about it, this is common -- we often hear about
crash victims waking up in the hospital with no memory of their crash.
But then he said something else that I found fascinating.
The doctor said that the brain is complex, more so than any computer,
and that we don't understand much about it. But as for blacking out
the memories of what happened before unconsciousness, he said that it's
not necessarily related to trauma. He said that it's probably akin to
the fact that we never remember the last few minutes before we fall
asleep.
Anyway, I just thought that was interesting.
Meeting notice: The next big workshop in the City's land use and circulation
elements update process is this Saturday. It will be about transportation,
and take place at Samohi, in the cafeteria. For details, to go the City's
website for the workshop: http://www.shapethefuture2025.net/
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