Time for the Chicago Way

(9 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

During the first critical week after Sarah Palin’s RNC speech, the Obama campaign chose to virtually ignore her attacks and bring the debate back to issues.  That was a mistake. Instead of nipping Palinmania in the bud when he had the chance, Obama has allowed it to grow unchecked, so that now it is flowering like a big, stinking orchid.

Obama’s Kerryesque strategery has already hurt him big time.  Demographics suggest and polling confirms that the upper Great Lakes is back in play, while the fight in the Inner West, Appalachia, and on the southern Atlantic coast has gotten a lot tougher. Previously demoralized Goopers all of a sudden believe they can win again, and are raising gobs of cash to launch more lies & smears all over the swing state airways.  

Obama can no longer pretend the pink elephant in the room doesn’t exist, nor simply dismiss Sarah Palin as a minor threat to Democratic chances of gaining back the White House in November.  Indeed, his Palin problem has become so serious that if Obama can not destroy her before Election Day, she may very well do the same to him.

I know that word ‘destroy’ may sound harsh to some ears, but as former Chicago Mayor Harold Washington once said, “Politics ain’t beanbag.”  Politics is a bloodsport, and the higher the office, the bloodier the sport.*  The Thugs understand this implicitly.  The Dems need to as well, because if Obama and his surrogates don’t fight as hard and as tough as they can against Sarah Palin now, we will all still be fighting her and everything she represents for the next four years – at least.  

Unfortunately, Obama’s veteran Windy City establishment crew seems to have gotten a bad case of the Blues about its roots.  Guaranteed, if Sarah Palin were running for Alderman on the northwest side, the Daley machine right now would be flaying her alive.  The 5th Floor boys would not be shy about using anything and everything to discredit her.  A half a dozen whispering campaigns would have already started, and any precinct captain worth his salt would be out knocking on doors and telling every bungalow belt babushka who answers why Sarah Palin isn’t fit to pick up her garbage.

Yet put these same cutthroat operatives in charge of a Presidential campaign, and for some inexplicable reason they run it like a Gold Coast fundraiser for a new snake exhibit at Lincoln Park Zoo.  (“I respect reptiles. I just don’t think they should mix with the mammals.”)

News Flash to the Obama campaign: this election is not about sequestering the snakes. It’s about slaughtering them in their holes, and as St. Patrick knew all too well, to do the job right you’re gonna need to get your halo dirty.

I mean come on, it’s not as if the Bering Barracuda doesn’t have it coming.

“This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word “victory” except when he’s talking about his own campaign. But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed … when the roar of the crowd fades away … when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot – what exactly is our opponent’s plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he’s done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer is to make government bigger … take more of your money … give you more orders from Washington … and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world. America needs more energy … our opponent is against producing it.”

(In my best South Side accent) “Hey Axelrod, you really gonna let ‘er get away wit dat?”

One lying cheap shot after another and no response by Obama other than some mealy mouthed complaining that Palin was talking more about him than about the issues.

Well…yah, of course she is, and she’s going to keep on slamming you because you are making her pay absolutely no price for it.  

Simply put, until the Obama campaign stops playing rope-a-dope and takes the fight directly to Palin (and I’m NOT talking about this week’s oh-too-sly, pig lipstick crap), the Dem candidates will continue to be viewed by independent voters as more of the same old liberal wimps who can’t fight their way out of a paper fish wrapper.

Is that right?  Is that fair?  

Who cares. We can worry about being right and fair after Obama wins.  In the meantime, Obama more than anything needs to seen as a strong leader who won’t let the opposition push him around – and especially (let’s be blunt) when that opposition is female.

Is that sexist? Of course it is, but that’s the country we live in, and when you are a politician running for office, you campaign in the country you have, not in the country you’d like to have.   The Goopers are running around telling everyone what a dangerous world we live in.  If Obama can’t stand up to little Sarah Palin (they argue) how can he stand up to Putin?  Sadly, judging from Obama’s painful timidity in the face of Palin’s unrelenting attacks so far, the thugs might just have a point.

Moreover, the sexism that says female attacks on males are more damaging pales in comparison to the sexism that says Obama should not respond simply because Palin is a woman.  Surely the mantra of the feminist movement has always been that women should not be treated differently from men.  Well, if feminists truly believe that, they should wholeheartedly support a robust Obama assault on Palin’s clear and imminent threat to everything the feminist movement stands for – rather than urging, as many have, that Obama restrain himself out of concern for the differences in their respective plumbing.

Or, to put it another way, if Sarah Palin were a man, would there be any hesitation at all about throwing everything they have at her?

We simply can not afford outmoded chivalry from our Presidential standard bearers.  Palin, the self declared pitbull, is as big an attack dog as any male, and her bite is even more deadly.  There is no finessing Sarah Palin.  She needs to be directly confronted and wholly discredited – not because she is a woman, but because she is a hardcore Bushist.

Of course, there are those who argue that too strong an attack risks provoking a female backlash as Palin cries victimization through her crocodile tears. To that I say bring it on.  Anybody who calls Barack Obama ‘Sambo’ and Hillary Clinton ‘the bitch’ is not exactly a sympathetic character to begin with, and no amount of phony pearl clutching will save her delicate sensibilities when voters learn all about what a corrupt, wingnut, creationist, book burning, corporatist sleazeball she really is.

Yet, the blogosphere notwithstanding, most voters are never going to learn much about the real Mrs. Mooselini until the Obama campaign stops messing around with pocket knives and finally loads up on the heavy artillery.

Because that’s the Chicago Way.

Update: Concern troll Karl Rove disagrees.

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*The language in this essay is, of course, strictly metaphoric, and in no way implies, promotes nor encourages any sort of physical violence whatsoever on any person.