Obama has accepted the Democratic nomination. The full text (as prepared) should include a hat tip to Kevin Rudd – yep, the working families have made an appearance.
For what it’s worth, there are some strange tropes in American politics, even if the broad sentiments are things most of us would endorse. For instance, Obama explicitly mentions the idea of “in ten years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East”; it’s nonsense, and Obama is smart enough to know it. China’s economic growth is to be feared; here, of course, China is the magic pudding that keeps on paying more for our dirt, no matter how much of it we send over. And climate change seems to be right at the bottom of the list of priorities.
Reaction from the American lefty blogosphere has generally been enthusiastic, but then again Obama’s ability to give a good speech has never been in doubt. Here’s hoping it puts him on track for a successful campaign. Aside for what it means for Americans themselves, McCain’s foreign policy is just scary.
The American blogosphere is enthused not because he gave a good speech (as you said, DUH) but because this is the first time in twenty five years that a Democratic candidate has issued a lengthy detailed and strong defense of liberalism as an ideology. They were a lot of caveats and extended hands to independents but at the core Obama defended the role of government to help the downtrodden and neither Clinton nor Gore nor Kerry had ever had the guts to go head-to-head with the GOP and tell them “You are wrong. We are right” on that – or on foreign policy. They generally let Republican framing in and try to work within them. Obama just reframed the whole race on his own terms instead and threw the ball of attacks right back at McCain after a month where they attacked him for silly things.
No mushy centrism. No shaking in the boots. It was pure red meat for American progressives and while it – smartly – didn’t soar to new heights, it was the left version of Reagan’s acceptance speech in 1980 (which I think was intentional. It was constructed very similarly).
Robert, the full quote was:
So it wasn’t an absolute, but at least an admirable goal. But do you want to justify the statement that it’s nonsense? Currently the US imports around two thirds of its oil supply. 58% of cars in the US are younger than 11 years old. Increasing prices will both push people to drive less, and to buy more fuel efficient cars. What will Obama do to help the process?
Now, if Obama’s cash injection can help American car companies produce some decent electric (or hydrogen, perhaps) and hybrid cars then American car owners wouldn’t be waiting for months to get their hands on a Prius. And that increased availability of efficient cars, coupled with ever increasing gas prices might mean that the vehicle turnover rate actually increases. So let’s say that 70% of the cars on the road in 10 years are produced after now. And let’s say that 20% of those are plug-in electric and 50% hybrid, where a hybrid might use say 50% less fuel than the car that it replaced. There goes 45% of gas consumption. Throw in reduced driving due to higher prices, some improved public transport in cities that are dense enough to support it (LA for example), some conversion to domestic LPG… I don’t think it would happen completely (not least because of all the heroic assumptions I’ve just relied on to get it that close), but with the right leadership and directed spending, and appropriate investment by US car makers, they could go a very long way towards the goal.
And while you may lament that climate change was at the bottom of the radar, the prescription for fixing the oil crisis sounded fantastic from a climate perspective: solar, wind, efficiency, nuclear, biofuels. And they had Al Gore speak only an hour or so before Obama – they weren’t trying to hide from climate change as an issue, it’s just not an issue that will win them the election. Really, it won’t. Given how much other political ground Obama had to cover tonight, I’m ecstatic that the only actual figure about spending in the entire speech was about renewable energy, given the low profile of climate change as an issue over here.
Oops, that two thirds referred to ALL imported crude. Turns out the amount from the Middle East is actually much less. Only Saudi Arabia is even in the top 5 sources. So I revise my statement: it would appear that the US gets rather less than 20% of its petroleum and crude oil from the Middle East. I definitely think that reducing their use of those by 20% is possible within ten years.
I want to say that tomorrow McCain is making his Veep nom announcement at a place called the Nutter Center.
That is all.
It was a very high quality speech, watched it twice today, live and later – it went down just as well the second time.
I think Benjamin is right in his assessment, Obama did strongly articulate the role of Govt in being a part of the mix in finding solutions to intractable problems.
As Obama said of the Republicans and McCain, they own the last eight years and it sounded like there was no way he was gonna let them off the hook on that.
Interesting too that he called out McCain on leadership, effectively saying bring it on. The debates are certainly going to provide a stark contract between the candidates because after this it’s obvious that Obama will make sure there is a contrast, and it ain’t gonna be colour.
1. What does Obama propose to do to the taxes of the top 5% of US taxpayers?
2. Does he believe that whatever he does to the top 5% will offset promised tax reductions to the other 95%? Obama seemed to imply vaguely that tax revenues would comprise a larger proportion of GDP. The mechanism for achieving this remains undescribed.
3. How, if at all, is Middle East oil qualitatively different from oil from the rest of the world, e.g., from Nigeria?
4. Obama’s enlistment of both Bush and Maliki as supporters of his Iraq policy was telling. Bush’s surrender over troop withdrawal timelines will hurt McCain.
“List of prohibited items: Food, Drinks, Backpacks, Firearms, Weapons of any kind, Spiked Jewelry, Chains, Knives, Umbrellas,….”
Nice investigative work there Amanda @4
You just canna do a thing these days at Nutter center.
Very impressive Obama work from what I have heard ,read but not yet seen.
Oil is a globally traded commodity.
Even if America becomes a net oil exporter, American motorists will still pay the world price.
A growing fraction of the world’s production is going to come out of the Middle East (as people like carbonsink have argued at length).
That world price will be determined in large part by Middle East production.
Energy independence is a crock.
That’s funny Amanda.
Geebus the man must surely be a spent force by now. What a daily ordeal he goes through. Its tiring just reading and hearing about all this ra, ra, rallying.
Was there ever even the most remote possibility that he wouldn’t accept the nomination?
If a week’s a long time in politics then ten years is forever. Its all very ominous, (especially the bit about the Nutter Centre).
@Robert, yep we’re all in the energy shitfight together and there is no get out of jail free card for anyone. As is the climate issue, but at least that is one area where (on the politics at least) America can make a difference, globally and locally.
Robert, Obama’s policy aims for a reduction in oil consumption – wherever it’s from. Part of that reduction would be through increased efficiency (hybrids etc), and part through replacement fuels such as locally generated electricity. The price of such replacements are generally higher than gas currently, and so are bound by supply costs rather than demand. That may change as oil prices increase, but there’s a limit to how much world oil prices being driven by scarcity and the demand coming from India and China can affect domestic electricity prices in the US.
And be happy that American motorists pay the (increasing) world price – it’s the only thing that puts renewables anywhere near the political map this year.
Pretty words… but can Obama really stand up to Big Oil and the Detroit companies?
If you want to see it via SBS….
Took a lot of time for us, due to our crap broadband connection, but quite a brilliant speech.
http://video.sbs.com.au/player/news/index.php?mmid=21096&chid=12&tabid=17
If you really want to see it and all the speeches in all their panoramic HD glory and have a fast online connection check this link out, it was awesome in a tech kinda way.
http://gallery1.demconvention.com/#
You’ll have to install MS Silverlight but it’s worth it for the full experience, if only to see how much online viewing is advancing and why high speed broadband rollout to all corners of the country is such an important piece of infrastructure policy.
Oh, and have a bigass data plan, it sucks down bandwidth and your download limits big time.
Katz @ 6,
1 and 2. This graphic might help. I believe the top 5% of taxpayers are > $150k. So, it looks like their taxes will go up under Obama’s plan (largely due to the repeal of tax cuts brought in by Bush). The suggestion from this graphic is that those increases will more than offset the cuts to the bottom 95%. There is lots more detail on the tax analysis at the Tax Policy Center.
3. Qualitatively, not at all – but for a country that sees its foreign policy compromised by the conflicts of interest associated with oil trade, it seems to have become part of the standard acceptable rhetoric (McCain uses the same argument to support increasing domestic offshore drilling).
4. Not necessarily, especially if he (McCain) can get everyone to look at how macho he is in standing up to Russia. That seems to be the plan at this stage, anyway.
Not sure if this is off topic, but how do people see the Republicans responding during their convention?
I caught most speeches over the last few days (my studies will suffer for it) and I get the impression that the Republican speeches will be limited in content. It will be difficult to argue better economic management, foreign policy etc (well, pretty much anything, thanks to the current administration) and may be forced into responding to the claims made during the Democrat’s gabfest. Or perhaps they’ll spend too long defend/apologising (Bush again) to structure a coherent narrative?
“4. Not necessarily, especially if he (McCain) can get everyone to look at how macho he is in standing up to Russia. That seems to be the plan at this stage, anyway.”
Yep and Putin is to be completely unbelieved, despite Condy having regular digs in Georgia, and American Republicans would never play that dirty.
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3601688,00.html
Obama actually used ‘working families’ in his 2004 convention speech – he beat Rudd to the punch by a long way!
Three points to consider:
1. Non-OPEC production has peaked, or is likely to peak very soon, well before OPEC.
2. U.S. oil production peaked in 1971 and has declined for almost 40 years despite huge advances in oil exploration and recovery technologies.
3. U.S oil consumption has grown year-on-year for a century, apart from a brief dip in early the 1970s, again in the late 1970s, and this year. In the 1970s oil consumption surged every time the oil price fell. There’s no reason to believe it will be any different this time.
Just these facts alone make it unlikely the U.S. will be any less dependent on Middle East oil a decade from now, probably more so.
Having said that, all power to Obama for setting the goal. We desperately need some leadership on this issue, and whether the motivation is oil independence or climate change, frankly, I don’t care, as long as pursue the right solutions.
Lets hope that Obama’s goal of oil independence is to his Presidency, what the Moon landings were to Kennedy’s. Just to hear him say the words makes me depressed at the pathetic lack of leadership we have in this country, where all we get is an ETS that excludes petrol, FuelWatch, and Marn talking up coal-to-liquids.
The highlight was Stevie Wonder doing Signed Sealed Delivered live.
Started off with ” I can’t hear myself”
I haven’t heard the speech in full (just snippets on the radio) but the best line of all the speeches so far was Bill Clinton’s “people around the world are more impressed by the power of our example rather than the example of our power.”
Which, from what I have heard, was Obama’s speech reinforced that great line.
“Even if America becomes a net oil exporter, American motorists will still pay the world price.”
If American motorists don’t need to buy any oil, they’re a lot less dependent on oil from the Persian Gulf. From 1977 – 85 US oil use fell 17%, oil imports fell 50% and oil imports from the Persian gulf fell 87% (and their economy grew 27%). A big investment in getting off oil will actually work and it will pay for itself in savings fast. Obama’s ‘ten years’ is bit of speechy rhetoric, but a 10 year plan could get them on a path to halve oil use in 20 years.
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McCain’s choice of VP – Alaska Gov Sarah Palin – seems to be designed to upstage Obama’s speech. If so that seems to me, to be a sign of weakness … you pick your potential vice-president (and therefore, potential president) on the basis of defeating one speech’s place in the media cycle?!
Well anyway it seems like an awfully defensive move in my eyes – a young female, blatently trying to steal the disenfranchised Hillary vote, but will it work after the convention? I thought that the Clintons did a good job rallying behind Obama and I would imagine that most of their supporters will follow them.
Robert,
I was feeling at bit mean because I bagged Obama’s acceptance speech on the grounds of patently unachievable aims.
After reading your post I don’t feel quite as bad
FWIW (and I’m sorry I was a bit tetchy in my response) I obviously think that America using less oil would be a great thing for both Americans and the world. Furthermore, Obama’s plan is not bad; his short-term stuff is mostly a crock, but his long-term plans are about as far as it’s practical for a politician to go at this point (still inadequate, though).
It’s just that, like I said, until the US gets its energy from sources that are not globally traded, it will have to pay the global price for it.
The medium is the message in that Barry (and now Sarah) are from the fringe of the empire. Think decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Byzantines with Theodora etc.
Also the message remains the same – fritter away US power as the last empire either way. King Barry 1 or McSame. Same top-heavy militarism. Same religious lunacy.
Same fiscal insanity. Its all good.
Large and influential sections of the US courtier class (aka policy intellectuals that the powerufl actually listen to) are seriously scared about:-
1. US power abroad, and
2. The continuing prestige of the domestic political and economic arrangements at home
The two issues are intimately related in complex ways, as posters here understand.
Obama is the best thing they have going, whose election will permit some way overdue repair and maintence work on the model, before the whole thing blows up.
McCain is not taken seriously by the serious people precisely because he would be unable to provide the necessary populist cover for what will be a long period on the blocks, while everything is tinkered with and tightened up.
BO can do that-si, se puede!-and so the think tanks of economic and political liberalism, both foreign hawks/domestic liberals and all the other permutations of the acceptable US centre, will assist in any way they can, to ensure he wins. The value of their assistance should not be underestimated.
I am very confident he will win and have been so ever since he announced he was running. I have serious money on it, and I am not in the habit of pissing my hard earned up against the wall.
The real question for what is left of the organised US working class, is what they are going to make of the best opportunity they have had since the collapse of their movement in the 60′s, to make up for forty years of moribund and utterly hopeless approaches to even the most minimalist version of their proper task. The US leadership of the organised working class has failed to maintain and improve the living standards of the working class (waged and salaried layers) and to preserve let alone extend, democratic rights generally, which is as essential as the wage contract for any working class movement if it is to survive. I do not think there has ever been a more utterly compromised and useless bunch of ‘trade union bosses’, anywhere in the part of the world loosley (and incorrectly) described as ‘liberal capitalist democracies’.
I mean no insult to the many frineds I have in the US trade union movement, but seriously, if they can’t make something of this window of opportunity and do some serious repair work of their own, then they will have handed the serious Right (as opposed to the whinging class) a victory not seen since the collapse of the Second International. That is how serious the stakes are in my view.