A Pertinent Question
contributed by Charles Lemos
I am going to challenge Obama supporters and others by asking some tough and pertinent questions that continue to linger in my mind that I believe disqualify Senator Obama from holding the Presidency.
While I have never been overly impressed by Senator Obama during his quest for the Presidency, the more I learned about him the more I believe him simply unqualified. So now I am going to turn back as to why the story of Barack Obama and Alice Palmer offends me so in explicit detail.
Alice Palmer was Barack Obama’s political mentor in the South Side of Chicago when he was doing community organization and running voter registration drives. In 1996, Alice Palmer decided to run for Congress vacating her seat in the Illinois State Legislature. She lost in the primary and decided to run again for her seat in the legislature. At this point, it gets murky. Obama says one thing, Palmer another. That discussion is largely irrelevant because of what Obama did. He challenged the signature petitions and had her stricken from the ballot. Whatever the merits of their personal argument, the fact also is that Obama struck the petitions of three others. He eliminated his opposition with a legal tactical maneuver and ran unopposed in the primary. He then faced token opposition in the general election. Some call it “bare-knuckles Chicago politics.” I prefer to call it disenfranchising of the homeless and the poor who were a large portion of those who signed those petitions.
I work with the homeless here in San Francisco. There are degrees of homelessness. Many of the homeless, actually have homes or better put a roof over their heads. They are called residential hotels. The laws vary from city to city but they all have one thing in common. The permissible length of stay is determined by law. Here in San Francisco, it is thirty-two days. So every 32 days, these individuals have to find other digs. They are constantly moving from one hotel to another. To be allowed to stay in one place, they need something they generally do not have, credit or a deposit. Obama should know this well since he worked with the homeless.
At my home here in San Francisco, I receive the mail of four individuals who are homeless and who live in residential hotels allowing them a permanent mailing address that serves as a legal abode so they can then receive services and technically vote. In the United States, a permanent address is required to vote. That’s the problem. If you are homeless, you are disenfranchised. It is a moral issue for me.
Here are the requirements in Illinois:
What forms of identification are needed when I register to vote?
- Two forms of identification with one showing your current residence address. If you register by mail, you must vote in person the first time you vote.
Do I ever have to re-register?
No, not unless you:
- Move to a different address
- Change your name
Here is the full link.
I hope you see the problem.
My problem with Obama on this issue is that he would have likely won that election and if he had a difference of opinion with Alice Palmer over who said what and who could do what if this or that happened or failed to happen, he did not have that difference of opinion with the other three candidates. Why take them off the ballot? Why not run a campaign that you are likely to win anyway?
To be fair to Obama, he did ponder how it might look if struck everyone off the ballot. If he doesn’t know by now, the answer is that it doesn’t look good and it goes against the image he so assiduously cultivated. To me this smacks of win at all costs and at the expense of the homeless. What else is it? I am happy to countenance countervailing thoughts. If your argument is that it is politics, I beg to differ since he is also being presented as someone who is “above politics” and “the real deal.”
Still I doubt that the Alice Palmer story is fully understood by Obama’s supporters because no one goes into it with the detail nor has the background required to demonstrate that is one instance of rather disturbing behaviour. To be homeless in America is to be forgotten. To advance his own political career, he struck by disenfranchising the homeless and the poor, the very people he purportedly claims to serve. While Senator Obama did nothing illegal in challenging those petitions, I believe that he acted unethically.
You can find the original news story here.
I welcome your responses. I especially welcome thoughts that might help in securing voting rights for the homeless. They are citizens, they deserve the right to vote and not be disenfranchised for lack of a permanent address.
A Post Script
Alice Palmer is now a delegate for Clinton from Illinois.
Tweet
Comments
well, let's not be surprised by ego and ambition in someone looking to "rule the free world." obama used some heavy-handed tactics in '96, but i'd also be very interested to hear some ideas for enfranchising the homeless, because it's certainly reasonable to me that people should be required to prove they reside in the state they are trying to vote in.
Charles:
Is it possible to use a P.O. Box or other address service for the purpose of voter registration?
Perhaps a non-profit mailbox service could be established on behalf of the local homeless.
Forgive me if I'm being naive, but I used a P.O. Box for several years while between college and a few apartments, and I voted in 2000 without any troubles. I may have used an apartment address; I honestly can't remember.
Regarding Obama in general, I agree this was a distasteful "win at all costs" actin. That said, how does this make Hillary Clinton any less corrupt? It feels like a lesser of two evils argument.
Knocking people off ballots is a pretty common practice in campaigns of all types. That alone doesn't make it right. I do tend to agree that candidates should be able to collect the appropriate number of valid signatures. In this case..
His main opponent had children collect 1,400 signatures in less then 24 hours before the deadline. Do you have any Idea how unlikely that really is? And how prevelant fraud is on these petition drives? Many less then respectable candidates sit there and sign the names of people they suspect to be hard to contact, folks with no phones or addresses at the YMCA etc. I clearly have no evidence of where this woman got her signatures and this doesn't say anything about the other opponents whom aren't discussed in detail.
I fully support voting rights for the homeless, have worked with organizations that register them, I have registered them myself and have encouraged them to vote. Many places allow homeless to register and list the area that they frequent as their address. It should be more widely respected.
List purging is a tricky business. I mean, a clean list is a part of ensuring candidates are able to contact voters. I think same day registration is more of a solution then keeping individuals on for ever. People die and move.
As for he betrayal of his mentor, It sounds from the quotations that Obama's old mentor betrayed him. She had told him he could run, perhaps endorsed him in his run. He went on to win his primary, then she lost her congressional race and came back and demanded her seat back from the nominated candidate. Here is the quote from your article.
Without reviewing the petitions it is hard to judge the moral implications of challenging his opponents. With tradition and the law on his side, Obama seems troubled about it all the way through the process.
I mean this sort of stuff happens on every little city council race in America. Are all those folks unfit to serve?
Who is it that is telling you that Obama is "above politics" and "the Real Deal"? I keep reading folks say he is the better candidate.
I guess my question in response to your post would be, how is this worse then Hillary Hiring Dick Morris, republican strategists, to attack relentlessly, Bill Clinton's opponents?
PS: Why do we care that Obama's former political opponent is a Clinton supporter?
It seems like a pretty ugly incident. The worst thing about it is that it's similar to GOP tactics to disqualify voters. I'd like to hear what he had to say about it.
No, this doesn't make this race a choice between the lesser of two evils. I don't think Hillary and Obama are evils at all. They're non-saints that the Democratic party should be thrilled to have running for the nomination. But at the same time, not all sins are equal. People should be able to get excited about a candidate even if they are forced to weigh pluses and minuses about them.
If there is a point to raising this question, however, I guess it's mainly to throw cold water on the enthusiasm of Obama supporters. We're talking about some incident in Chicago politics years ago, while in this campaign Hillary's upporters tried to stop people from voting on the Vegas strip, and she is trying to get delegates placed retro-actively from Michigan and Florida, where Obama played by the rules and wasn't on the ballot. It seems she's trying to make it seem like a wash ("they're both nasty!"), so that she can somehow break the tie in some other area.
Here's another source on the Palmer issue, although it covers other issues as well: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/30/us/politics/30obama.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=Palmer%2C+Alice&st=nyt&oref=slogin
Below I explain, first, why the general premises of the argument would provide the same reasons for voting against Hillary. And second, the way these premises are related to the specific Palmer issue involves some serious non-sequiturs.
Either the conclusion of this argument is that we should (a) vote for Clinton, (b) go Republican, or (c) just not vote this November. Now (b.) and (c.) seem to me unlikely to be what you were suggesting (but feel free to correct me on this). So:
(1.) Conclusion (a.) doesn't follow. Your argument presupposes either that we ought not vote for anyone who has ever done something unscrupulous for political gain, or that "disenfranchising" the unregistered voters--if that is an apt description of what happened, about which more in a moment--is worse than anything politically unscrupulous Clinton has ever done, in a way that merits special censure of Obama. Say, her vote for the war on Iraq, for what appears to be political convenience, and which has destroy hundreds of thousands of lives. Or say, blackballing other Democrats working on universal health care to push through her own proposal (according to some, this destroyed the prospects of creating a consensus on the issue with the political will to push a plan through in the '90s) [see link below on this latter point]. Now, I personally would not vote against Hillary merely for something unscrupulous she has done in the past: it depends on what it was, its consequences, and what it shows about her. But your argument assumes this general premise, so let's go along with it for a moment, to arrive at a second tacit assumption, and the sprawling logical gap at the core of your argument.
(2.) You provide no connection whatsoever between (i.) Obama screwing over Palmer--which was wrong, if that's what he really did, although it is not clear from the article that this is what happened --and (ii.)disenfranchising the homeless. Although the legal reasons for the petitions being rejected are not perfectly clear, it appears that some of the voters on the petitions were disqualified because they were unregistered, not because they were homeless specifically. Now, granted, you tried to connect the petition issue with disenfranchisement in two ways. First, you try to related them by simply asserting that some of the people on the petition were homeless--but there is no evidence for that. Second, you explained that homeless people cannot register to vote without a legal address. But the unregistered voters could have just as easily been simply too young to vote, or people who simply never bothered to register. What are your reasons for thinking most people on the petition were homeless specifically? Obviously the class of people who are unregistered voters is not exhausted by the homeless.
(3.) But there is an even deeper logical flaw at the central core of the argument. To see it, let us just grant for a moment, without evidence, that those on petition were unregistered because they were homeless. Even granting this, the argument is a non-sequitur because it depends on 'guilt by association' reasoning. For even if Obama had let illegal petition signatures stand, this would not bring those who signed it one step closer to being able to vote. That is, because of the state requirements, not Obama, they would have been "disenfranchised" anyway and could not have voted for either Palmer or anyone else, including Obama. This has nothing directly to do with Obama specifically, it would only be an incidental outcome of his petition rejection charges that those unregistered voters just happened to be homeless.
You are right to raise the issue of the struggles of the homeless in being able to register to vote. I am in sympathy with you on that. But this just strikes me as a bad argument because, to sum up my argument): (1.) if I accept your premises, then I have the same general reasons--politicking--to reject Clinton (2.) you do not establish that the people on the petition were homeless, and (3) even if they were, it would not follow that Obama had "disenfranchised" them.
Post-Script: Here's the link on Clinton and Healthcare: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/opinion/05brooks.html?scp=2&sq=Brooks%2C+Clinton&st=nyt
Well I think voting is the least of the problems the homeless have Norm. I live in LA, and here the homeless can't get a job with out proof of a place of residence, and you can't get a place of residence with out proof that you have a job. They have created a paradox in this city that keeps these people homeless indefinitely, and there's not a whole lot that I see being done about it. Instead they just design the city so that we don't have to see the decay, and the rich just reside hi above all the shit bellow, so they can go about there lives living in ignorant bliss. Welcome to Mid-Evil America! :P
Even if they have secured voting rights though, who is going to drive all of these homeless people to the voting booths? Do they bring the voting booths to the homeless shelters?
Even if they have secured voting rights though, who is going to drive all of these homeless people to the voting booths? Do they bring the voting booths to the homeless shelters?
"I agree this was a distasteful "win at all costs" actin. That said, how does this make Hillary Clinton any less corrupt? It feels like a lesser of two evils argument."
It makes them both politicians to the core, successful ones at that...and love it or lump it, that's what it's going to take to defeat the Republicans this fall. You don't have to like it, but that's the game my friends, and if you can't acknowledge that then we are going to loss to the Republicans again, and again, and AGAIN...welcome to the dirty world of politics.
...and no I don't like it either.
"I agree this was a distasteful "win at all costs" actin. That said, how does this make Hillary Clinton any less corrupt? It feels like a lesser of two evils argument."
It makes them both politicians to the core, successful ones at that...and love it or lump it, that's what it's going to take to defeat the Republicans this fall. You don't have to like it, but that's the game my friends, and if you can't acknowledge that then we are going to loss to the Republicans again, and again, and AGAIN...welcome to the dirty world of politics.
...and no I don't like it either.
sorry for the double takes, my computer was taking a crap. :P
the important thing to look at is the core intentions of the candidate on the issues that are really going to help the US.
We are all human, and make mistakes. Both Clinton and Obama are probably going to do a beautiful job getting us out of Iraq and with good intentions- (I keep some faith).
Obama is a better organizer, more in charge and is open minded... Clinton has more organized plans in healthcare/economy and what-not...
We should focus on the most important issues to decide what is the best option for our community.
having read a bit more on this, it doesn't bother me at all. in fact, i'm glad mr. obama can take decisive action. we're hiring an executive to run a government that has been nearly destroyed by sadistic vermin. i don't need or want the candidate to be perfect. a truly rational person wouldn't want the job. what is required is a decent ambitious machiavellian, and not a sinister one. i support obama because i think he is more decent and more rational than his opponents. what matters to me are his stated positions:
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/
and mr. lemos, are you suggesting somehow that clinton is less of a political reptile? that would be an astonishing conclusion.
the repiglicans are about to settle on mccain. if we have any sense we'll settle on obama and put our energy into making sure he wins.
This was not disenfranchising voters. This was testing the candidates' ability to follow the rules in getting on the ballot. Do you want someone to win the election who is incapable of getting the minimum (not a huge number) number of signatures?
To assume that the people who's signatures were wrong are homeless is a huge assumption, and a stretch.
I think that the ability to read the rules, follow them, and follow up to check them is an important qualification in leaders.
I think Reed77 makes a good point. I feel like those that are attacking Obama are making up reasons why he has support. I, like every Obama support I know, thinks he will be a better president. I think he is a savvy politician, great speaker, and person of good character (for a politician). I'm not looking for Gandi here.
His change message, to me, is one of the change in how citizens relate to their government. That is the only way that government will change. His success or failure in this regard will be because of how we react. And since he's damn good at inspiring speeches, I'm betting that we will have a very active citizenry going into his presidency.
I think what scares people is the fact that we Obama supporters are enthusiastic. This is not brainless 'George W. Bush supporter' enthusiasm. We really do think, and think that he is the best candidate.
So please keep up with these posts. The well stated responses by readers have been great.
"I'm not looking for Gandi here."
Yeah besides, despite all the good that he did even Gandhi turned out to be a racist...
http://www.trinicenter.com/WorldNews/ghandi4.htm
...You dig deep enough on ANYONE, and your bound to find something not to like about a person.
A wise man once told me, "We would all fail to be human, with out a healthy does of hypocrisy." The point being that we all got a little crust on our undies, metaphorically speaking. ;) I defy you to find someone who doesn't...Especially a Politician.
"I'm not looking for Gandi here."
Yeah besides, despite all the good that he did even Gandhi turned out to be a racist..."
So they're all equally bad? Whenever people start bringing up Gandhi's misdeeds, you know that the Rovian tactics which smear everyone and say "that's politics" has taken firm hold. Believe it or not, you can make quite clear distinctions between political figures. It does take some effort, though. The attempt to claim that, e.g. Obama's fake "inconsistencies" on the war or one petition-challenging incident years ago are equivalent to Hillary's multitude of spineless shifts in positions on Iraq and her brazen attempts to count delegates that Obama had no chance at seems to assume that people just aren't paying any attention.
"So they're all equally bad?"
No...I personally think Obama is a better choice than Hillary. I just don't get hung up on every little peice of dirty history that is brought up on these people. If I did, I wouldn't be voting for anybody.
Again and again, you come across as a pro-Clinton hack.
Some honesty on that front would be appreciated.
Hillary Clinton is getting support from Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, and I find that rather persuasive.
We know what a Clinton presidency runs on (and she has made it clear she intends to return to those 'good old days.')
I have read the lengthy article. It is fascinating, however, I do not understand using this article to point to the disenfranchisment of homeless people specifically. The larger issue seems to be whether Obama behaved ethically when eliminating his challengers.
One of them, Askia, admits his petitions were a mess as a consequence of paying people $5 a sheet to collect them. The collectors then apparently circulated the petitions among themselves and counter-signed each other petitions with phony signatures. Two of the other challengers withdrew with little fanfare.
Palmer , the former mentor of Obama, says that the process was unfair because she didn't have enough time or funds to vet her petitions. She had run for a higher office and lost the race to Jesse Jackson's son. With only 24-hours to qualify for the congressional seat she had abandoned, even though she had promised Obama that she would not run if she lost the higher office, she reneged on her promise and submitted petitions hastily gathered by a group of children. When the signatures were cross-checked against voter polls the vast majority were found to be fraudulent. She was disqualified.
I have to wonder why is it Obama's ethics that are being questioned. What about Ms. Palmer's? Obama, had asked for assurances multiple times from Ms. Palmer, before risking the engagement and cost of the campaign. She assured him the district was his, and "nodded approval" of his candidacy. Then she lost the run for a higher office and decided to go back and try to get her old seat. She reneged on her promise and then used fraudulent petitions to reenter the race for her congressional district.
The writer is arguing that Obama, who received assurances from Ms. Palmer that she would not run if she lost her bid for higher office, who then risked hiring staff, setting up an office and devoting vast amounts of time going "door-to-door in his thermal underwear" to campaign long hours after working his day-job, should have dropped out in deference to Ms. Palmer. Exactly where is our sense of fairness here? Has the world gone crazy?!
There is plenty of dirt on both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
What bothers me most about Hillary Clinton is her vote to go to war in Iraq. And Obama clearly stated his opposition to this damned war. And from her floor speech I can, in a way, understand her reason for doing so, which was to give inspections more importance. However, Hillary Clinton then says, "If we knew then what we know now..", and then she contradicts this rationale when she then says in this debate:
... and it is this comment which bothers me the most. It seems to indicate that she is justifying attacking Iraq even knowing what we know now.
That comment just really pisses me off. And the way that she says all with so much righteous indignation. We fucked up Iraq and now she's laying the blame on the Iraqis.
Isabella Clark,
You have stated so eloquently what I was thinking, however I lacked the ability to state it as you did.
I read Lemos' article many times over wondering what I had not understood. It seemed to me that he was using this example and stretching the envelope in some kind of convoluted manner to demonstrate how Obama didn't care about homeless people, and that came across as disingenuous. And Lemos' veracity was already in question because he initially said that he would never vote for Obama, and then said that he regretted saying that. Then in his next post he said that he was neutral as pertains to Obama vs Clinton and hadn't made up his mind. And now he says, "I have never been overly impressed by Senator Obama".
If someone supports Hillary Clinton, fine. I think she's a good candidate in comparison to the others who are running. But one should at least be forthright about how one feels.
And I don't know what went on behind the scenes and who said what, but if this lady had dropped out of the race for her seat in the Illinois State Legislature and then decides to return and run again for the Illinois State Legislatre because she lost in the primary for her congressional seat, well, that's the way the cookie crumbles.
Charles,
I have to admit that I have limited patience and time for plowing through claims and counterclaims in cases like the one you've described. I was at the point where I had to simply file your grievance as one of the nasty, though apparently legal, things that campaigns engender - a significant point against Obama, but not necessarily fatal.
However, Isabella Clark's post seems to blow your complaint out of the water so completely that a reasoned reply is called for. How about it?
Charles - your tactic of using ultra-selective bits of information and twisting them to make hyperbolic statements like "Obama is simply unqualified" is weak and wrong. And the you try and cloud your message of derision by championing a worthy message of voter disenfranchisement. If you really wanted to inspire people to do something about homeless disenfranchisement, do you think this is the way to do it? By the way, in LA county right now there are 94,000 votes that have not been counted. 94,000 votes that the Clinton campaign originally did not want counted because they didn't fill in the "double bubble". http://www.calitics.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=5083
Re voter disenfranchisement, there's also the controversy over the Culinary Union in Nevada. Politics is dirty business. No doubt about that.
I've been involved in campaigns which decided to mount petition challenges.
And I would defend the practice in certain instances.
I have seen outright fraud and intimidation in petitioning. I've seen petitioners dupe people into signing petitions for the wrong candidate by misrepresenting the form (which is extremely complicated in many states, so confusion is easy to induce).
I support the need for more ballot access. But I don't support outright fraud and manipulation. In some cases, legal challenges are warranted.
So I don't see this story as clear-cut by any means. I'd have to know more of the circumstances.
You know I'm not attached to either of these candidates, there are things that I hate and love about both of them...but no matter which one we decide to go with they need to be able to WIN in the Fall, or it's all for nothing, and according to this article Obama has the best shot at taking home the win! You send the best team to the Super-Bowl, that's all that I'm trying to say.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/08/20008.matchups.schneider/index.html
I am glad to be in the company of Adam, Joann and Tim. We have pretty carefully read the article you base your big homeless disenfranchisement beef on and your beef seems pretty uncooked. I just read your bio and it also seems as random and poorly put together as your contribution. Maybe the title of your contribution, "A Pertinent Question" should be re-titled "An Impertinent Question." Who ARE you, really?
"So they're all equally bad?"
No... I just don't get hung up on every little peice of dirty history that is brought up on these people. If I did, I wouldn't be voting for anybody."
Good then, I think we agree.
I don't think either Hillary or Obama are qualified to be president. Neither is McCain or Huckabee.
We the People, on the other hand, are completely fucked. Exactly as the corporate-fascists planned it.
Post a comment