Just kidding.
While I still have lingering concerns about a Hillary Clinton presidency, I am done rubbing salt in the wounds of her loyal supporters and am trying to figure out a way to diffuse the divisions instead. We have been used against each other for too long as it is. Hillary supporters have a right to play this out however they choose. I would be doing to exact same thing in their position. I would be hatching plans and looking for loopholes and searching for a way – any way – that would make my guy the one who moves on to the general election against McCain. That’s why have backed away from criticizing Hillary using language that could possibly be offensive to her supporters. I am not always 100-percent safe on that score, but I am trying my best. If they return the favor then the effort will have been worth it.
This blog is actually about Barack Obama, the man currently leading in all three metrics being judged in these contests. With all the Woe and Despair and Teeth Gnashing going on around the web, aided and abetted by the corporate media, I figured it was time to remind Barack supporters why this guy is the right one to lead us out of the wilderness.
Let’s start in the distant past – all the way back to the January 8th New Hampshire primary and our first view of Barack in defeat. He had been predicted to win by double digits, but lost by a couple points instead. Come back when you are done watching.
After being built up to expect a huge victory, the man has class and dignity when he loses. His tone hasn’t changed this entire campaign. His message is still the same – consistent and focused on every place this country can agree on changes without inflaming differences. He speaks to a common sense majority of republicans, independents and democrats all working toward common goals based the common good.
I anticipate the corporate media will experience a backlash in coming years for their failure to do their job and fr their complicity in our nation’s downfall. I anticipate most news and information will flow from Internet sites within the next decade and TV as we know it will be die a well-deserved death.
I think their methods and tone have finally backfired, largely because they don’t understand viral communications or the Internet or the quickly changing attitudes of the American public. We are pissed, and they treat us like children with methods that are clearly designed to trick and manipulate us. Take the nonsense about Barack’s lead for the general election supposedly crumbling. It is a poll of 500 democrats with a margin of error of 5%. It doesn’t account for independents or republicans, about 25% of Barack’s vote in open primaries, a more accurate reflection of general election voters. Yet the corporate media continues to pound the drum – Trouble for Barack Obama!
That the status quo is trying to defeat him is all I need to know.
I will stipulate that the democrats are evenly divided this year, but they aren’t the only ones with a stake in this election. Open primaries clearly show Barack building a governing majority that could do a lot of good over the course of two terms in office. His success will help down-ticket dems as well, building even larger democratic majority in Congress. We can turn this thing around if we can fianlly agree that no candidate will ever be a perfect choice, but Barack Obama is clearly the right choice for America and the preferred choice a bare majority of the democratic party. Not a resounding majority, but enough that he has won within the rules set forth at the beginning of the primary season.
George Orwell was right on the money with the effect and timing of what he predicted – he just didn’t anticipate the sophistication with which it would be carried out. He anticipated a world like the one in which he wrote, where our oppression was shoved right up in our face and monsters wore their masks in public. Instead, we have been manipulated and medicated and managed to the point that many Americans are living in a fantasy world. The Matrix is closer to what is going on without all the bother of being enslaved by futuristic machines.
We are enslaved by our economy and our psychology, by our society and our lack of empathy for one another. Our education system has been dismantled while a complex and technologically advanced propaganda machine was been put in its place. The disparity between the highest paid and lowest workers has never been greater. Ever. We have never tore raw materials out of the Earth at a greater pace – all to manufacture junk that will be buried back in the Earth (or sold to China, who will be happy to do our recycling for us) a year or two later.
This country has been hijacked by corporate pirates and corrupt politicians.
That’s why I think Barack is winning the primaries. It is also why he will win the general election as well. The corruption and manipulation has become so obvious that many Americans have been jolted from their intoxicated slumber. I am actually glad the DLC and RNC became so brazen. Otherwise Barack’s campaign would have never been possible. The conversation would have never shifted in such fundamental ways. We would have never been inspired to thrown off the chains of distraction and division that we are still seeing those ripples moving out across the political pond.
Thanks for the positive mesage. Sen Clinton so often enrages me and distracts me from the reasons I became excited about Sen Obama. You remind me why I am donating and volenteering this cycle (and it has nothing to do with her).
Sweet! The very first comment completely understood the main point of the blog. That almost never happens! Thanks for the kind words, Larry.
Sorry, Jason. You weren’t kidding. And you shouldn’t be pretending to apologize for it.
Long ago, this campaign stopped being about ideas and became one of personalities. In that sphere, Sen. Obama is definitely going to win the battle.
Fine. I can live with the result. One thing you have to day for the system — there is one.
But I am damned if I going to be listed as being with the “status quo” simply because I support Sen. Clinton. This is the general media consensus of folks like Josh and Chris Matthews — that only cronies and people who are morally corrupt support Sen. Clinton.
Sorry. I think she would be a better, tough president than either Sen. Obama or Sen. McCain. I think she would had a fairer tax policy and would simply do a better job.
Sen. Obama is probably going to win because Sen. Clinton was so demonized by the right wing talkies that many lefties began to believe what was being said by Hannity and his buddies.
You’re entitled to do that. And, in the end, lefties will have little choice but to cave in and vote for the man.
But we will remember that we got steamrolled, mocked and abused by Obamans (including their many media supporters) for believing in our candidate.
This blog wasn’t even about Hillary Clinton, but since you brought it up, I’ll be happy to comment.
You are entitled to your opinion, but the facts are that Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton and every democrat who formed and managed the DLC over the last 16 years is responsible for the corporate takeover of this country. The proof is in her voting record and the video record as well. Hillary would be a center-right, neolib with a corporate-friendly agenda that would be a detriment to most Americans. Just like Bill Clinton’s administration was. How do I know? She already votes that was as a senator. She advocated the same trends as first lady. Why would she change as president?
You can imply the movement toward a smarter and more responsive government is somehow a mirage and that the backlash against the status quo, of which your candidate is simply a single part, is only a bunch of black people and college kids, but the facts don’t bare that out.
Barack is winning open primary states by forty and fifty points. That is unprecedented. He has been getting more votes in red states by himself than all the republicans combined. This is not some fantasy being pushed by a fringe minority in this country. This campaign has attracted millions of democrats, republicans and independents – most of whom don’t even agree on most issues.
We are just tired of the fighting and see that it gets us no where. You saying Hillary is tough is not a positive attribute to most Obama supporters. I talk about the media and the corporate takeover of government and somehow you take this as a condemnation of your choice for president.
Let me slow it down: I don’t care who you vote for.
I don’t know you. Vote for whomever you want. If you consider my disdain for your candidate as somehow a personal attack on you, there isn’t much I can do about that. I can’t support Hillary because of who she is and that has nothing do with you or Barack.
You accuse Obama supporters as somehow being held hostage by the demonization Hillary suffered in the 1990s. Seriously? I don’t even watch Hannity or listen to any right-wing commentators ever. OK. I did listen to AM radio driving to Minnesota from DC, but that mostly for curiosity sake. I agree. They are unhinged.
You know what I do for information on the candidates?
I go to http://thomas.loc.gov and look up their records and what legislation they have championed into law. What have they voted for? Against? I educate myself and then make up my mind accordingly. I also leave myself open for new information. It’s called growing older.
Many other Barack Obama supporters are even older and certainly wiser than I am, so their decision making is probably more sophisticated.
Some may even be enamored with the man as you suggest.
However, whatever the case may be, our support for Barack has nothing to do with our lack of support for Clinton and even less to do with her supporters.
What we are witnessing this year is no less than the future direction of the democratic party – DLC or DNC? 50 States or Triangulate? Progressivism or Corporatism?
It’s clear that progressives and neolibs can’t play in the same sand-box.
The differences between these candidates is not just personality. It is about issues. It is just not about the issues you talk about like healthcare and taxation because the two candidates are in the same position on these issues except in the minutia. The issues where the differ are in the conduct of campaigns and governance. What Hillary and her supporters call toughness I call biligerence. It does not serve her well. The issue is when some one slanders your oponent you stand up for them. Sen Obama has done this throught the campaign. He did it when Sen Biden was being criticised for some coment that was taken out of context on race. he stood up and said Biden is no racist. In the last debate even after Hillary had spent her time attacking him on BS he said that the Bosnia question was BS and tried to bring the debate back to the issues. Hillary has had many oportunities to do the same. She knows Obama is not an extreemist and could have taken the highroad any time she wished on several of these issues. She decided to get in the gutter every time. It was not only abrasive it was politicaly stupid. It lost her votes when she needed to gain them. Obama has supporters (including me) who have forgoten and taken the low road from time to time, but he has not. He is an exaple to us all of how one should behave and lift the discourse. Do not blame him for the shortcomings of his abrasive supporters. He will bring us arround.