Tag: 2008 elections

Mr. Obama:

  As one of the relatively few people in this country who saw through your act early on, and for the right reasons, let me first say how utterly ashamed I am to call myself a registered Democrat.  You are a disgrace not only to the party at large, but to the thousands — perhaps, dare I say — even millions of Americans who were and remain so desperate for someone to come and rescue our once-great nation from the fascists that they placed their hope and faith in you.  Hang your head in shame, and then look me straight in the eye and don’t turn away until I’m done.

  According to an article in New York Magazine, the electorate has had about enough of you.  A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has you running in a statistical dead heat with Republican John McCain, FiveThirtyEight.com’s poll doesn’t look good for your chances either, and Zogby has your GOP counterpart five points ahead.  Are you trying to blow this election for us?!?  Because it sure as hell seems as though you are.

  The NY Magazine article gives several reasons for your pathetic performance thus far, but it left out the most obvious: not only your consistent refusal to fight back against the smears of the far right and its tired old champion for this election cycle, but, most importantly, your deliberate alienation of your own political party’s base.  Time and again, you have demonstrated that you do not represent Americans on any issue of importance, and voters realize this.  Long before you secured the Democratic Party nomination to be the ringer candidate against the election sham’s already-chosen victor, you were taking positions including (but in no way limited to):

• Your vile “Harry and Louise” attack mailers, which used the same right-wing talking points against Hillary Clinton’s health care proposals that were used to great success in the 1990s,
• Your purging – quickly followed by a reinstatement after the inevitable uproar from outraged supporters – of roughly nine hundred anti-war delegates from California, probably out of fear that they would defect over to the Clinton camp once they caught wind of your impending flip-flop regarding a pullout from Iraq,
• Your regular, condescending, talking down to Blacks in speeches,
• Your praise of the traitor Ronald Reagan,
• Your betrayal during the FISA battle,
• Your allegedly telling the Canadian government that your initial apparent criticism of NAFTA was “just campaign rhetoric,” which was quickly buried thanks in large part to a denial by Canada that you had said any such thing,
• Your provocative and unnecessary pandering to Israel’s fascist government over the topic of Jerusalem, and
• Your embrace of the horrendous Friedman school of economic policy.

  That’s just off the top of my head, nor is it the most worrisome reason for your refusal to campaign like someone who wants to win.  I have a friend named Dave who has worked on numerous Democratic political campaigns, including yours.  He is witness to the stupid things you’ve got your people in critical states such as Ohio doing, such as:

• Failing to even install a working telephone system in your Lakewood, Ohio, campaign office,
• Sending your people out to register voters — REPUBLICAN-leaning ones at that — whom you MUST know will NEVER vote for you, and
• Deliberately avoiding mentioning that it was under the presidency of Bill Clinton that average American incomes were higher, while it was under the shrub that those same incomes fell.

  This isn’t rocket science, Obama; it’s politics.  You’ve been in the proverbial game long enough to know this.  You seem hellbent on losing this election, and you need to explain why to those who placed their faith and hopes in you before you dash them just a little over two months from now.  It’s that, or pull your head out of your rear orifice and start trying to win this thing.  This race has never been, nor shall it ever be, about you; it’s about this country and the people in it, and turning back from the precipice of fascist empire your predecessors have brought us all to.

  That’s all I have to say to you, Obama.  You have your choice to make, though I am certain you made it long ago.  Just know this: no matter what happens in November, you’ll still be comfortably employed, while the rest of us will have to continue suffering the conservative policies you support.

Sincerely,

Archangel M

‘Twas the night before Veepmas, when through Daily Kos

users were betting who Barack liked the most.

The diaries were screaming “pick this one or that!”

In hopes that Obama soon settles the spat;

The comments were nestled all snug on the page,

While visions of favorites became all the rage;

And Kos in his nightie said “please settle down,

you’ll love him or her or think they’re a clown.

There’s no pleasing all kossacks, and it doesn’t matter,

C’mon just be patient and stop with the clatter.”

Original article by Uri Avnery, subtitled A Knight on a Gray Horse , via counterpunch.com.

If there’s one thing that should have been learned by the Democratic Party over the last thirty or so years, it’s that running against the base is a recipe for failure in elections.  This lesson, however, has been repeatedly ignored by most of the party’s politicians.  When one goes over the electoral cycles since 1980, it’s clear that the DLC’s “run-to-the-right” ploy has never actually won an election.

“But,” you tell me, “Bill Clinton won in 1992 and 1996.”  This ignores the fact that independent candidate H. Ross Perot pulled enough votes away from the Republican nominees those years to swing the elections in the Democrat’s favor.

After Democrats lost control of Congress in 1994, the party was unable to win it back until public disgust with the GOP had grown to such proportions that their defeat in 2006 was inevitable.  Since winning back the Legislature, however, Democrats have for the most part continued to piss away any chance they might have had for shoring up their victory and securing a lasting majority.  They’ve kept funding the illegal occupation of Iraq, have continued to rubber stamp the shrub’s dismantling of the Constitution–even going so far as to protect him from impeachment for high crimes including treason, and basically let down the public on every issue of importance.

Barack Obama isn’t even trying to win vital states such as Ohio; in the heart of the state’s Democratic stronghold, the campaign hasn’t even bothered to set up telephones for phone-banking–volunteers have to use their own devices to call voters.  Furthermore, instead of going after frequently voting Democrats, Obama has his people reaching out to Republicans, most of whom have stated flat out that they have no intention of voting for him.  I know this through several Democratic volunteers who’ve put their efforts into Obama’s campaign.  They are the eyewitnesses on the ground.

There’s a reason Ohio’s GOP voters did not deign to put J. Kenneth Blackwell in the governor’s mansion: he’s technically black.  It didn’t matter to them that he supported every bug-eyed insane policy and social position they did; his skin color was darker than theirs, so he could not be allowed to become governor.  That Obama insists on trying to reach the still-strong bigot bloc, forsaking his own party’s base in the process, is absolute stupidity.  He’s going to blow it for us again, just as John Kerry and Al Gore did before him.  McCain will cheat his way to the dictatorship created by the shrub and his gargoyle, all because Obama wants to “play it safe” by running to appease the very wealthy.

How long shall Progressives continue to hold on to the fantasy that we can somehow reform the party from within?  Yesterday I happened upon a diary at you-know-where that states flat out what I’m sure a majority of Americans are thinking: that it is foolishness to continue remaining a registered Democrat as long as the party’s conservative wing controls it.  And make no mistake, Obama is very much part of that conservative wing despite whatever denials his followers choose to engage in.

Sooner or later the Progressive base of the Democratic Party has got to wake up and realize that it is pointless to remain with people who always denounce, marginalize, and campaign against its interests.  One might say that now is not the time to dump the Democratic Party, that there is too much at stake.  To that I say that it’s never going to be the “right time,” because there’s always going to be “too much at stake.”  Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said:

The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach. We need enthusiasm, imagination and the ability to face facts, even unpleasant ones, bravely. We need to correct, by drastic means if necessary, the faults in our economic system from which we now suffer.

And:

This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory.

I agree with the Kos diarist: it’s time for the Progressive base of the Democratic Party to face the unpleasant truth that we cannot and should not continue to waste our energies trying to reform from within a political party that long ago decided it wants to be something that runs contrary to everything we stand for.  The stakes are indeed high, but we have to ask ourselves if it’s worth another four to eight years of frustration as we watch our beloved country and our world fall further in the hellish pits of fascism and ruin.  If Democrats as a whole will not represent Progressives, then we need to break away and form our own party so that our movement has genuine representation.  If nothing else, it will send Democrats a wakeup call: they cannot continue to dismiss and ignore their party’s base with impunity.

If you haven’t read Smirking Chimp writer Eric Boehlert’s excellent column regarding the shameless double standard in media coverage of John McCain, now is the time to do it.  There are some grammatical errors, but beyond those, the piece does a superb job of pointing out the tepid criticism of just one of the Republican candidate’s endless series of lies – compared to its record of pouncing on nearly everything, no matter how innocent, uttered by Democratic candidates as pathological deceptions.  Boehlert systematically dismantles the new Lie being promulgated that the media has somehow “turned” on McCain.

Barack Obama does not support the return of the Fairness Doctrine.  He should, if for no other reason than it would place some restraints on media goons who play favorites during electoral cycles.  Please use the comment feature for ideas on how we can get the Democratic candidate to change his mind.