Day’s Inn, days out

I am writing today from the Day’s Inn on New York City’s Upper West Side, a hotel that is in the news today: Here is where New York’s new governor, David Paterson, and his wife carried on some extramarital affairs during what they referred to as a “rocky period” in their marriage. My stay here is just coincidence, however. The Day’s Inn is one of the few remaining reasonably decent hotels in Manhattan for around $200 per night, not counting taxes. It is clearly a place where African-Americans feel comfortable–in fact, it may be an African-American owned business, although that is just an impression not borne out by any investigation.

I am in the city briefly to see my agent, conduct some business for Science, and see a couple of friends. Walking the streets of Manhattan has always been a high for me, ever since the days (nearly 25 years ago) when I was just starting out as a writer and making the rounds of NY-based magazines. As it turned out, most of the publications I have written for over the years have been based in Washington, DC (Science, Smithsonian, National Geographic Traveler), Los Angeles (Bon Appetit, LA Weekly, LA Times, etc) and Santa Barbara, California (Islands) rather than the Big Apple; but the publisher of my first book, Simon and Schuster’s Free Press, is certainly located here, as is my super agent. And what could be greater bliss than sitting in a New York diner early in the morning, reading the New York Times as the waitress refills your coffee cup until you get that nice caffeine buzz so good for the brain (although probably not good for the heart.)

Anyway, front page of the Times today features a story about Obama, “On Defensive, Obama Plans Talk on Race.” The candidate has pastor problems, credibility problems, image problems, etc. Although I voted for Obama in the California primary (absentee from Paris, just hope my vote was really counted) I have never seen him as a savior, despite his obvious charisma. He is simply one of the better progressives the Democratic Party has (rarely) produced in recent years, but he is a Democrat, subject to and restricted by the fairly strict confines of that very conservative organization. Nevertheless, it is alarming to see him slipping on the trail of banana peels that Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been laying down in his path, because Clinton–as I have said so many times on other blogs such as marccooper.com–is in my view one of the most opportunistic politicians this country has ever produced. The most depressing thing, however, is how many people have bought her line about “experience” and “tested” when her recent record is simply awful: Voting to authorize the war in Iraq, more recently voting for the Lieberman bill (an obvious authorization for war in Iran), voting against the ban on cluster bombs (Obama voted for it), and what to me is the most serious example of her terribly wrong judgement, Clinton’s blanket endorsement of Israel’s recent invasion of Lebanon to fight Hezbollah.

Indeed, this is proof of the vacuousness and bankruptcy of identity voting. It makes no more sense to vote for Clinton because she is a woman, as so many feminists are advocating, than to vote against her because she is a woman; likewise, to vote for Obama because he is African-American makes no more sense than to vote against him for the same reason. Identity politics has helped greatly to obscure the candidates’ real political views, and this goes for both Clinton and Obama even if I personally favor Obama on political grounds.

There is a lot at stake here. If Clinton somehow manages to grab the nomination, via a combination of cynical manipulation of the process (could her insistence on counting the results in Michigan and Florida be any more clear an example?) or cynical attacks on Obama out of the “Republican playbook,” as they say, what will we be left with? Millions of disillusioned progressive Democrats, and a McCain presidency. In my earlier days as a student revolutionary, I thought these were just the right conditions to move the country to the left (eg 1968, the Nixon-Humphrey faceoff.) Now I am not so sure. Things really can get worse, and they can stay worse, for as long as we all live.