Breaking news!

By michael o. allenHomepageNo Comments

Webb Withdraws as Possible Vice President Pick for Obama By Amy Gardner, Washington Post Staff Writer, Tuesday, July 8, 2008; Page B05

U.S. Sen. James Webb (D-Va.) announced yesterday that he will not seek a place on the Democratic ticket next to Sen. Barack Obama, ending months of speculation that he was a front-runner for the vice presidential nomination.

Webb told Obama (D-Ill.) last week that “under no circumstances” would he consider the vice presidency, according to a statement issued yesterday. Webb said he will campaign for Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

Continued . . .

July 8, 2008

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Webb

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“Black America and Scots-Irish America are like tortured siblings. They both have long history and they both missed the boat when it came to the larger benefits that a lot of other people were able to receive. There’s a saying in the Appalachian mountains that they say to one another, and it’s, ‘if you’re poor and white, you’re out of sight,’ ” Sen. Jim Webb, D-Virginia, said in this video.

“If this cultural group could get at the same table as black America you could rechange populist American politics. Because they have so much in common in terms of what they need out of government,” he added.

Listening to Jim Webb in this rather too brief snippet convinces me more than ever that he should be Sen. Barack Obama’s running mate. I don’t know if he’ll accept the vice-presidency but, I think, together, he and Obama could craft a message that could reshape the Democratic Party for generations to come.

I want to take race off the table as a wedge issue. I want to make the Republican Party a minority party that speaks to only a small percentage of Americans, the very wealthy. I believe in Webb and his wisdom. He should definitely be a part of the national dialogue.

He mentioned in the video a Wall Street Journal opinion-editorial article that he wrote in Oct. 2004. In Secret GOP Weapon: The Scots-Irish vote , Webb examined the Republican Party’s success wooing poor and working class whites to their cause:

To an outsider George W. Bush’s political demeanor seems little more than stumbling tautology. He utters his campaign message in clipped phrases, filled with bravado and repeated references to God, and to resoluteness of purpose. But to a trained eye and ear these performances have the deliberate balance of a country singer at the Grand Ole Opry.

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May 22, 2008

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Jim Webb wrote

By michael o. allenHomepageOne Comment

of Class Struggle in the Wall Street Journal opinion editorial page. Some people think Sen. Barack Obama does not understand poor working people. I am not one of them. Obama came into politics because it has been his life’s work helping working people.

I understand Webb has other assets (and liabilities), but if he’s who it’ll takes to help Sen. Obama reconnect with this important demographic group, then I support him as our vice presidential nominee.

Here’s his article:

ELECTION 2006

Class Struggle: American workers have a chance to be heard by JIM WEBB, Wednesday, November 15, 2006

The most important–and unfortunately the least debated–issue in politics today is our society’s steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America’s top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are literally living in a different country. Few among them send their children to public schools; fewer still send their loved ones to fight our wars. They own most of our stocks, making the stock market an unreliable indicator of the economic health of working people. The top 1% now takes in an astounding 16% of national income, up from 8% in 1980. The tax codes protect them, just as they protect corporate America, through a vast system of loopholes.

Incestuous corporate boards regularly approve compensation packages for chief executives and others that are out of logic’s range. As this newspaper has reported, the average CEO of a sizeable corporation makes more than $10 million a year, while the minimum wage for workers amounts to about $10,000 a year, and has not been raised in nearly a decade. When I graduated from college in the 1960s, the average CEO made 20 times what the average worker made. Today, that CEO makes 400 times as much.

In the age of globalization and outsourcing, and with a vast underground labor pool from illegal immigration, the average American worker is seeing a different life and a troubling future. Trickle-down economics didn’t happen. Despite the vaunted all-time highs of the stock market, wages and salaries are at all-time lows as a percentage of the national wealth. At the same time, medical costs have risen 73% in the last six years alone. Half of that increase comes from wage-earners’ pockets rather than from insurance, and 47 million Americans have no medical insurance at all.

Manufacturing jobs are disappearing. Many earned pension programs have collapsed in the wake of corporate “reorganization.” And workers’ ability to negotiate their futures has been eviscerated by the twin threats of modern corporate America: If they complain too loudly, their jobs might either be outsourced overseas or given to illegal immigrants.

May 10, 2008

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Obama's VP choice

By michael o. allenHomepage4 Comments

My own candidate for Democratic Party vice-presidential nominee would be Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, D-KS. She is a wildly popular, twice-elected governor of a reliably Republican state, Kansas. She has a reputation as a consensus builder who works across the party lines to get the job done for voters. I had also thought that she may help Sen. Barack Obama assuage hurt feelings over defeating the strongest female candidate to ever run for president.

She was an early endorser of Obama who campaigned for him in several states. She is term-limited and cannot run for a third term.

Gerald Pomper, of the Board of Governors Professor of Political Science (Emeritus) at Rutgers University, thinks he has a better candidate. Writing for Larry Sabato’s Crystall Ball ’08, Pomper advanced U.S. Sen. Jim Webb, D-Virginia, and argues persuasively that he would make a better choice on the ticket.

Webb is a former Republican who served as secretary of the Navy under Reagan, a decorated Vietnam veteran, and he is very vocal about his opposition to the current Iraq war, although he has a son serving there. Webb, in fact, matches McCain in war heroism and his younger and has better sense than McCain seems to have.

Webb also would bring specific political advantages to the Democratic ticket. His rural roots, vigorous language and championing of working class values would compensate for Obama’s evident weaknesses among these voters. Webb provides a populist platform on corporate regulation, trade, taxation and health care that would further extend the party’s appeal to its lower-income base. Born in Missouri, educated in Nebraska, California and the Naval Academy in Maryland, he encapsulates a national electoral appeal. Finally, to the limited extent that state residence matters, he would help to switch Virginia into the Democratic column for the first election since 1964.

Webb’s disadvantages include that he was a novelist who wrote some indecorous things about women. He can be blunt to the point of arrogance and once confronted George W. Bush in the White House about the war. Also, although he ran a highly contested U.S. senate race not too long ago, he might still need vetting.

May 9, 2008

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