RECAP: 8 Thoughts on the Current Campaigns

The campaigns are not current anymore of course, but here's the recap of my thoughts about the campaigns of John McCain and Barack Obama.

1. One Unites, The Other Divides
2. Worse Than Bush
3. We Must Scare You
4. Violence
5. To The Uninformed
6. It's McCain's Fault
7. How to Lose a Presidential Campaign
8. President-Elect Barack Obama
   

President-Elect Barack Obama

8 Thoughts on the Current Campaigns #8

To be honest, I didn't think the American people had it in them. Obama ran a hopeful campaign. He appealed to our better natures. He won anyway.

It was a given that Obama would be better on this issues than his opponent. The Democratic candidate is always better on the issues. However, he was campaigning on the most progressive of issues. He wasn't playing the mythical middle of the road, he veered left. He even admitted that he was going to raise taxes on the rich. He won anyway.

When it was time to choose a running mate, Obama chose someone who would be more helpful in helping him govern than would help him get elected. Joe Biden was not the rock star pick that Senator Clinton would have been. He wasn't going to inspire millions of undecided voters to suddenly switch their allegiance. He won anyway.

When the financial crisis befell the country, Obama did not overreact. He didn't run off at the mouth and find himself forced to retract every statement a day or two later. He was a steady hand. He never looked flustered. He won anyway.

I didn't think the American people expected much of their President. Obama was almost the total opposite of the man who has held the job for the past eight years. He was calm, considered and intellectual without appearing elitist and condescending. He won anyway.

These are not the best of times. The American Dream has dimmed in the hopes of many. The next four years will not be easy. We can have confidence they we have chosen the right man for the job. Barack Obama ran a superior campaign. Hope for the future is alive again. We won.

How to Lose a Presidential Campaign

8 Thoughts on the Current Campaigns #7

• First, you should abandon the maverick image that won over the press and much of the electorate in your 2000 bid for the Presidency and instead, present yourself as a raving conservative lunatic.
  
• You should then inspire the people to hate others for their religion, their sexuality, and the color of their skins.
• You must make the campaign about your opponent since there's no chance that you could actually win over voters with your own policies and temperament.
  
• Always choose an unqualified running mate to sure up your support among the worst elements of your own parties constituency, even though they would have never voted for the black guy in the first place.
• Always react to a crisis in an irrational manner. You should never let them know what you might do next! If they expect you to zig, zag!
  
• At the debates, make sure to treat your opponent with contempt. You should only mention his name through clinched teeth. Never fail to look angry and uncomfortable. Be dismissive!
• Whine about the media coverage every chance you get.
  
• Despite supporting the worst President in the history of this nation over 90% of the time in Congress, you should treat the people as if they are stupid and won't believe that your administration wouldn't simply be an extension of the current administration.
• You should drop the name Ronald Reagan every chance you get.
  
• Most importantly, you need to regularly espouse conservative political ideals at a time when they have destroyed our nation's economy.

It's McCain's Fault

8 Thoughts on the Current Campaigns #6

Republicans have already begun pointing fingers at one another over what appears to be an inevitable loss tomorrow. (I'll still believe it when I see it, but I'm hopeful.) It would appear that many think Palin will bear the brunt of the blame. In fact, some people, such as Josh Marshall, believe that it will be the effective end of her national political career.

It's hard to deny that Gov. Palin, despite an early burst of excitement, has been a drag on the ticket. Some McCain insiders believe that she is a diva and hasn't done the things necessary for a national race. She keeps her family too close. She's too hard to prepare. She doesn't speak well extemporaneously. All true. She's a loser of a VP candidate. Is it her fault though?

No, John McCain is to blame.

President Bill Clinton said of Barack Obama, "(I)n his first presidential decision, the selection of a running mate, he hit it out of the park." He was referring to Joe Biden of course. Is anyone, I mean anyone of any note, saying the same thing about McCain's decision to pick Sarah Palin? Of course not.

Yes, Gov. Palin is a failure as a running mate on the national scale. It was the duty of the man running at the top of the ticket to pick a running mate. Everything he needed to know about Palin was in the public record. He has no one to blame but himself for her drag on the ticket.

To The Uninformed

8 Thoughts on the Current Campaigns #5

Do you listen to Sean Hannity?

Do you find Rush Limbaugh entertaining?

Do you watch Bill O'Reilly nightly?

Is Brit Hume your idea of a first class anchorman?

Do you appreciate Fox News' balanced perspective on the issues?

Do you believe Keith Olbermann to be the devil?

Do you believe Katie Couric asked unfair questions of Gov. Palin?

Do you sympathize with the fictional Republican character Joe the Plumber?

Are you scared of black people?

Do you believe the Latinos are talking all of our jobs?

Do you believe God himself wanted George W. Bush to be President?

Do you believe that the traditional media is liberally biased?

Do you think every Muslim is an enemy of America?

Do you think that the Fair Tax plan is truly fair and would be good for America?

Do you think the war in Iraq was necessary?

Do you really think that we are fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here?

Do you believe Ronald Reagan was the model for an American President?

Do you believe our progressive taxation system is a form of welfare?

Do you think private enterprise would run our schools better than the government?

Do you believe John McCain is a maverick?

Do you believe Sarah Palin is authentic?

If you do, I believe that you are beyond reach. Not to be patronizing, but I do feel sorry for you. You need more help and more information to cure your ignorance than we can afford to give you with the election only 4 days away. I would advise that you crawl into a hole and wait out the election.

Everyone else, get out and vote for Obama. Don't believe the polls. Don't assume we've won this election. Do not believe it until the bad guys concede. Do your part. Vote.

Violence

8 Thoughts on the Current Campaigns #4

I wish I could say that I'm shocked that John McCain and Sarah Palin are not doing more to reign in the hostile feelings of their crowds, but in this election year, this is just par for the course. There is nothing wrong with anger in politics. It is anger after all than is fueling much of the desire for change in Obama supporters. When anger, however, spills over into outright hostility, there is a problem.

This is not to say that there haven't been incidents of Obama supporters going to far. As deplorable as these incidents have been, they have been isolated and they have been rare. For the conservatives, the hostility and threatened violence has been overt and widespread. It is the rotten core of modern conservatism and it is a threat to us all.

Consider these incidents at McCain/Palin rallies:

• A man yells "Off with his head" at a McCain rally.
• One man at a Palin rally says of Obama, "Kill him". Governor Palin says nothing.
• Another rally, this time in Scranton, Pennsylvania, another call to kill Obama.
  
• The many videos of supporters arriving and leaving the rallies yelling until they are red in the face about their hatred for Obama.
  

At this point, it is common knowledge that McCain/Palin rallies are little more than hatefests designed to inspire righteous rage in their supporters. It is no wonder that the rhetoric of their supporters has turned so violent. The mailings and robocall campaigns, all done on behalf of the McCain campaign or the Republican Party. have further stoked these violent feelings. Consider these items:

• A robo-call that aired in North Carolina, among other places, claims that Obama cares more about Hollywood than America.
• A Virginia robo-call that claims Obama isn't "who you think" he is and suggests that he has no interest in keeping the American people safe.
• Another robo-call claiming that Obama has worked closely with a domestic terrorist that bombed the Capitol and the Pentagon.
• A RNC mailer that claims Obama "thinks terrorists just need a good talking to."
  
• Yet another robo-call that claims Obama doesn't think babies deserve medical care. Seriously.

Of course, this is all just harmless rhetoric, right? Nobody would ever act on this, correct? Well ...

• Four men were arrested in Denver in the possession of firearms. These men intended to assassinate Obama during the Democratic National Convention.
• The ATF broke up a plot by two skinheads to shoot up a number of black students at a High School in Bells, TN and eventually make an attempt to assassinate Obama.

I fear a national tragedy may be in the making.

We Must Scare You

8 Thoughts on the Current Campaigns #3

Ashley Todd was visiting an ATM in Bloomfeld, PA when she was attacked by a black man. The mugger would then notice that a bumper sticker on her car supporting John McCain. In a fit of rage, her attacked carved a 'B' in her face. Fox News and The Drudge Report immediately provided extensive coverage of the attack.



Of course, the police suspected she was lying from the start, and she would later admit as much herself. CNN chose not to cover the story because they believed it needed further vetting first. Rich Sanchez savaged several other news organizations for their coverage.



The questions now is, where did the story come from? How did this phony attack come to play such a prominent role on the highest rates news network in the land? Well, because the McCain campaign chose to push the story, and Fox News and right wing radio will dutifully respond anytime the McCain campaign calls. McCain's Pennsylvania Director of Communications, Peter Feldman, appears to be the man who not only pushed the story, but embellished it with additional racism and such.

How could the McCain camp be deceived into pushing this story? Why would they augment the story with the taint of racism that the facts didn't support? Easy. They are losing and they are desperate, and in that desperation, there is no low to which they won't seek.

John McCain has served in Washington for over three decades. If he so chose, he is more than capable of running a campaign of ideas. As a former protege of Barry Goldwater, he is as well versed in conservative ideology as anyone in politics today. The problem is that the people are ready to reject conservative ideology. Instead McCain has run a campaign that is a veritable greatest hits of Republican smears, past and present.

They are playing the "socialist" card. They are playing the "communist" card. They are playing the "Arab" card. They are playing the "Muslim" card. They are playing the "soft on terror" card. They are playing the "dangerous" card. Their surrogates are even playing the "scary black man" card. They do not care if their scare tactics are based in truth. All they know is the path to the White House requires scaring you into voting for McCain. McCain is Bush.

It was, of course, FDR who said, in the midst of the greatest economic crisis this country has faced, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." It is Barack Obama who says, "In my heart I know you didn't come here just for me, you came here because you believe in what this country can be. In the face of war, you believe there can be peace. In the face of despair, you believe there can be hope. In the face of a politics that's shut you out, that's told you to settle, that's divided us for too long, you believe we can be one people, reaching for what's possible, building that more perfect union." It is John McCain who wants to scare you. Which do you think this country needs in this hour of crisis?

Worse than Bush

8 Thoughts on the Current Campaigns #2

Yesterday, Atrios summed up exactly what I was thinking about Senator McCain.

(T)here was a time not all that long ago when I thought that a McCain presidency would at least be a marginal improvement over the Bush presidency. Now I believe it would be much, much worse.

Unlike Atrios, I did fall a bit for John McCain in 2000. I thought that if the choice in the general election was between McCain and Gore, we'd be OK. Now, I never bought into the McCain as moderate line, but I did believe him to be the "noble competition". He was the guy from the other side who was willing to engage in a battle of ideas, conservative versus progressive. He was the victim of slime and would never engage in such campaign tactics himself.

Oh well. You live, you learn.

The bloom fell off the rose for me immediately following 9/11. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, McCain was ready to start a war with Iraq. He was, outside of the members of the Bush administration, the most consistent hawkish voice in the country. Today, he refuses to admit that the war was a mistake. In fact, after listening to him, you would think the war started with the surge.

After Iraq, he seems to be itching for a war with Iran, that even Bush seems to know is a mistake. It would seem that since he fought in a war, he would like to make sure that every man and woman in the armed forces gets that same opportunity. He is awfully cavalier about the loss of life.

I've gotten myself off on a tangent. McCain would be worse than Bush. Yeah.

McCain is a hot head. He loves to brag about being a maverick and his off the cuff style, but ultimately, his style leads to bad ideas, bad policy and the potential for crisis and disaster. He's one of those "leaders" who believes its best to do something and do something quickly. The idea of sitting back, taking a deep breath, reflecting for a moment, is as foreign to him as the idea that the American people would rather have Obama as their President.

McCain's style has led him to pick to unqualified, despicable Sarah Palin to shake things up. It led him to pretend to suspend his campaign and interject himself and the politics of the election into the negotiations for the bailout package. It has led to one shift of tone after the other. Do we need a President this erratic? Is this someone we could trust in a time of crisis to get it right the first time?

Perhaps the area where McCain is truly worse than Bush is in the divisive rhetoric of his campaign. For someone to top the George Bush / Karl Rove team for dirty tricks is astounding. So many people felt so bad for McCain after the onslaught he suffered from Bush and Rove in 2000. The lesson a good person would have taken from his experience is that this type of politics cannot be tolerated. That the electoral process needs to be reformed. What lesson did McCain take? It worked so he'll do it. He'll hire the same people who attacked him in 2000. In fact, he'll go even further. He'll accuse his opponent of being a terrorist sympathizer.

On November 4th, the choice to make is an important one, but it is also a simple one. The choice to make is Barack Obama. Send McCain home to stew in anger and regret at what he has become.

One Unites, The Other Divides

8 Thoughts on the Current Campaigns #1

There is one candidate trying to bring our country together. His rhetoric is crafted to appeal to Democrats, Republicans and independents alike. His is a message of hope. At its heart, it says that if we are willing to work together and we are willing to sacrifice together, we can accomplish anything. Together, we can bring about a new prosperity that is inclusive of all Americans.

There is one candidate trying to tear the country apart. His rhetoric is crafted to divide us. He seeks to scare us. He seeks to exploit wounds that are centuries old in a naked grab for power. His appeals speak to our worst instincts. His message is that by helping those who need it the least, prosperity will trickle down to the least among us. His message is wealthy Americans first, the rest, eh.

One candidate's campaign is less about himself than about the movement it has come to represent. It is about people taking control of their own destiny. It is not about waiting for change, it is a campaign that has empowered people bring about change themselves. It is reflected in the manner in which the campaign has been funded with over 3.1 million people contributing an average of near $80 each. It is a campaign that inspires thousands upon thousands of individuals to register to vote. It is a campaign that promises the best of democracy. It is a campaign for a people powered, and peaceful, revolution. This campaign IS hope.

One candidate's campaign is about his opponent. This campaign has given up on its own ideas. In fact, they've even admitted that if they have to run on the issues, their candidate will lose. Instead, they seek to tear down their opponent. They stretch the truth when convenient. They exaggerate when necessary. They lie simply because they can. They are working to delegitimize the democratic process. They are working to cast doubt on what seems like their inevitable loss. Any electoral result that doesn't put their candidate in the White House will be rejected at any cost. They reject the other candidates fundraising as unnatural. The divisions exploited by the candidate have left many of his supporters seething with a near violent rage. How long will they contain it?

My greatest fear is that the hopeful candidate that seeks to unite us will win the election, and that the negative candidate, the candidate of division, will win the war. To prevent this, we must be vigilant. We can never forget that this is still a democracy. We the people can stop them.

Yes we can.

[Cross posted in my diary at The Daily Kos]