Unlike most everyone else, I guess, I give Obama credit for saying what he said to the VFW. He could just as easily have said it to a friendly audience. He could have preached to the choir. But Obama apparently believes that you run to be president of all the United States, not just the ones you carried. One America, remember?
Are you surprised? You shouldn’t be. It’s who he is and always has been.
So, listen: all of you who are wringing your hands over Obama — if you think he can’t (or won’t) throw a punch — think again. He went eyeball to eyeball with Clinton & Clinton — the best in the business — and he won. Do you have to be a brawler to win? Or can you be an Aikido master instead? We’re about to find out.
Obama’s gotten this far because he apparently has an extraordinarily good idea of who he is what he can do. He seems very confident, very cool. He is seemingly very steady, very deep. He understands his place in history and gets inspiration and drive from it.
You say you trust his judgment, right? Well, here’s where you put that trust on the line.
Now he’s about to go toe to toe with The Republican Slime Machine and its puppet John McCain. And when it’s over, we’ll see who the winners and losers are.
So, if you’re too squeamish to watch or if you think it’s already over (win or lose) then you’re probably not a real political junkie. Because, as for now, the real game hasn’t even started yet, and won’t for another two weeks.
Pass the popcorn.
What? You think us hippies ain’t got any hats we need to go buy one? We make ’em outta hemp. Got lottsa hats.
KLo is still in the prediction business and sez it’s Gu911ani for McSame’s VP, which means it’s the Prick (which dooms them, period. BTW, Biden will eat them all for lunch. He’ll do no harm and make the VP debate entertaining.
How long before Limbaugh retracts his blustery threats to slam any pro-choice (read non-Mittens) VP?
Limbaugh will vote for a rancid ham sandwich with an ‘R’ next to its name when the time comes. It’s what he does.
“He seems very confident, very cool. He is seemingly very steady, very deep. He understands his place in history and gets inspiration and drive from it.”
Compared to the alternative, at least, you could have said the same of Gore and Kerry.
I wish I had your faith in the electorate, for lack of a better descriptor. The choices have been plain to the lucid and non-indoctrinated all along, to many more only as the predicted has occurred. Anti-Democrats and racists (overt and unconscious) are still out there and neither Obama’s nor McCain’s real qualities will matter one bit to to them
The game is now, sadly, irretrievably, making the other guy more repellent, regardless of what is true. Nothing more.
That fact, couldn’t be much more depressing to me because of it’s testimonial about our culture and the characteristics of the people who populate it, yet the basic amorality and the net effect of it trouble me still more.
Here’s the thing: whatever ground McCain is making up seems (so far) to be primarily with his own base. In other words, the Republicans are falling in line.
Obama, on the other hand, still has work to do with his base. Democrats don’t fall in line — they fall in (or out) of love. His perceived “move to the center” disaffected a significant number of the partisans who apparently believed that Obama was leading a movement instead of just trying to get elected. In addition, there is (are?) still a significant number of Hillary Democrats who are not happy. I’ve seen polling that indicates that this slice of the Democratic base is about 3x the corresponding slice of the Republican base who don’t like McCain.
Like I said: buy a hat and hang the f**k onto it — the next couple of weeks will be intense.
“Obama, on the other hand, still has work to do with his base. Democrats don’t fall in line — they fall in (or out) of love.”
That’s too bad and why Obama’s unnecessary capitulation on FISA was such a dreadful mistake. As you well know, this election won’t be decided by either party’s base, it will be decided by the vast, ignorant, mostly moronic middle of America who have no interest at all in politics or policy (until it bites them in the ass, of course). If Obama still has to win his base and can’t portray his opponent as the lying, deranged old fool that he most surely is, then they will be free for the slanderous anti-Obama indoctrination that McCain is happy to provide them.
As you well know, this election won’t be decided by either party’s base
Not sure I buy that just yet on the Dem side, given the current polling. There are too many disaffected Democrats (just in my own family!) who are still dragging their feet (I’m talking to you, Bill Clinton). They may come around in the end, but WTF, you know?
Look: I was pretty disappointed with the FISA outcome, just like many people were, but given a 2-, 3-, or even 4-candidate election, I’d still choose Obama in a heartbeat because I’d want forward progress even if it were measured by millimeters per year. A vote for McCain (or Barr or Nader) would represent a net backward movement in the same time span.
Obama (and the rest of the Democratic party) still represents progress, if only minimally; McCain and the corrupt Republican party represents a further devolution into the slime pit.
Preaching to the choir there. You know my philosophy; lesser of evils and all. But my point still stands: if Obama can’t run against McCain while McCain is free to smear Obama to death with the Republican base and the great unwashed masses: advantage McCain. At least, in the absence of a press corps with any functional moral compass or the ability to tell shit from Shinola. I see little reason for optimism at this point.
Just read what kos had to say and I think he’s got it about right:
That last part is important. Yes, I know pollsters ASK YOU if you are registered when they call; but there’s a lot of time yet between now and November for more people to be registered and then for the GOTV ops teams to get these people to the polls.
Is McCain doing this? Not even close. His strategy is to enflame people with BS issues like infanticide and Cold War II — and then hope they’ll vote. For him, it has to be an air war. But it’s the ground game that gets people to the polls. And Obama has the ground game going like gangbusters.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not wailing and wringing my hands as some other liberals are. I’m just not counting any unhatched chickens and I’d like to see that the Obama people really understand the game. As has been suggested, Obama may have a game plan that was written before he won the nomination and it may play out just as successfully as the nomination plan but with the gasbags still doing their worst imitation of journalists, the right-wing smear merchants in high-gear, the masses still clueless and a Republican advantage with the timing of the conventions… Color me pensive.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not wailing and wringing my hands as some other liberals are.
Similarly, I’m not channeling Bobby McFerrin imitation. Fact is, if Obama isn’t good enough to beat McCain, then — by definition — he doesn’t deserve to be president.
But Obama always was a very quick study and we’ve got time to work this out.
“Fact is, if Obama isn’t good enough to beat McCain, then — by definition — he doesn’t deserve to be president.”
Have to agree to disagree with you there my friend. Winning has little to do with deserving to win, in politics and just about everything else that isn’t a one-on-one contest of physical capability with few rules of conduct, e.g., two animals competing for a carcass.
“I again saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift and the battle is not to the warriors, and neither is bread to the wise nor wealth to the discerning nor favor to men of ability; for time and chance overtake them all.”
— Ecclesiastes 9:11 [Chapter/verse irony God’s, not mine]
If anything should be learned from the last thirty years, that’s right at the top of the list.
Let me rephrase it then, because we’re closer on this than it sounds — The president isn’t necessarily the most deserving candidate; the president is the one that wins. Americans will not tolerate a loser.
BTW, DemFromCT has looked at the latest polling from NBC/WSJ (and others) and has this to say:
OK, point taken. One more quote then:
“…but when a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental—men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack, or count himself lost. His one aim is to disarm suspicion, to arouse confidence in his orthodoxy, to avoid challenge. If he is a man of convictions, of enthusiasm, of self-respect, it is cruelly hard. But if he is, like Harding, a numskull like the idiots he faces, or, like Cox, a pliant intellectual Jenkins, it is easy.
The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by the force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre—the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.
The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
— HL Mencken, 1920
So, what’s changed?
Actually, I’ll answer: TV. But, within the filter of “men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand”, i.e., the establishment media gasbags, does that still make a difference?
No, I don’t think it does. Mencken was a pretty shrewd observer of human nature.
Here’s the thing: TV is not a magical device, nor was the telephone. Nor is the Internet. These are just channels that connect endpoints which are still inhabited by people whose brains (and hearts and guts) have not evolved at a pace commensurate with the technology they’re using.
The early-adopters of these technologies have an advantage, but that fades as the others play catch-up. Once the rest of them learn how to use the tools, or different (or better) tools, the incremental advantage might change hands. But it is we — the people — that is the one constant, throughout.
And/But that’s just the price we pay, isn’t it?