Archive for the 'Barack Obama' category

Richard Cohen Is What’s Wrong With Journalism

Jun 03 2008 Published by under Barack Obama, Candidates, Columnists, Craziness, Democrats, Elections, Hillary Clinton, Political Parties, Politics

Richard Cohen today opines on the sorry state of campaign 2008 as demonstrative of the racism and misogyny of America on the eve of the Democrats nomination. It is probably the most ridiculous piece of writing I’ve seen in a good long time. More than his charges of racism, it clearly demonstrates the sad state of journalists today. It rambles from one half-baked thought to another and never stops to examine its own self-contradictions.

Wherever I go — from glittering dinner party to glittering dinner party — the famous and powerful people I meet (for such is my life) tell me how lucky I am to be a journalist in this the greatest of all presidential contests. I tell them, for I am wont to please, that this campaign is indeed great when, as history will record, it is not. I have come to loathe the campaign.

I loathe above all the resurgence of racism — or maybe it is merely my appreciation of the fact that it is wider and deeper than I thought. I am stunned by the numbers of people who have come out to vote against Barack Obama because he is black. I am even more stunned that many of these people have no compunction about telling a pollster they voted on account of race — one in five whites in Kentucky, for instance. Those voters didn’t even know enough to lie, which is what, if you look at the numbers, others probably did in other states. Such honesty ought to be commendable. It is, instead, frightening.

I acknowledge that some people can find nonracial reasons to vote against Obama — his youth, his inexperience, his uber-liberalism and, of course, his willingness to abide his minister’s admiration for a racist demagogue (Louis Farrakhan) until it was way, way too late. But for too many people, Obama is first and foremost a black man and is rejected for that reason alone. This is very sad.

I find it funny that Cohen, like so many others, would argue against the practice of racial profiling, yet has no problem profiling whites.

Those voters didn’t even know enough to lie, which is what, if you look at the numbers, others probably did in other states. Such honesty ought to be commendable. It is, instead, frightening.

Is it possible that people in other states voted against Obama because he is black, but did not disclose that? Sure it is. However, pockets of ideology are like concentrations of anything – they don’t always disperse. To assume that others “probably did” is to engage in the same conjecture he decries in “the incessant blogging and commenting and talking and yapping and hype.”

Cohen’s central thesis seems to be “If you oppose Obama, you’re a racist. If you oppose Hillary, you are a misogynist.”

Yes, voter participation is way up and in the end, the Democrats will choose a woman or an African American and, to invoke that tiresome phrase, history will be made. But this messy nominating process has eroded the standing of both candidates. It has highlighted the reality that racism still runs deep and that misogyny, although more imagined than real, is not yet a wholly spent force.

How exactly has it done that? The contest brought more people to the polls (arguably a good thing). All the white men in the Democratic primary didn’t fare to well compared to Obama and Clinton, so clearly race and sex had little to do with preference.

I’m just not sure how he can make the leap that the entire Democratic party either loathes women or loathes minorities, given they’re the only two that remain standing at the end. Maybe Cohen should have started with the unspoken question that is inherent in his column – “Where did all the white guys go?”

With regard to Hillary specifically:

I loathe what has happened to Hillary Clinton. This person of no mean achievement has been witchified, turned into a shrew, so that almost any remark of hers is instantly interpreted as sinister and ugly. All she had to do, for instance, was note that it took Lyndon Johnson to implement Martin Luther King‘s dream, and somehow it became a racist statement. The Obama camp has been no help in this regard, expressing insincere regret instead of a sincere “that’s not what she meant.”

I loathe also what Hillary Clinton has done to herself. The incessant exaggerations, the cheap shots, the flights into hallucinatory history — that sniper fire in Bosnia, for instance — have turned her into a caricature of what her caricaturists long claimed she already was. In this campaign, Clinton has managed to come across as a hungry hack, a Janus looking both forward and backward and seeming to stand for nothing except winning. This, too, is sad.

Now to be fair, Cohen also points out that Hillary casually mentioned that RFK didn’t get killed until June. Taken with the Johnson/MLK comment, and the way her campaign has used veiled bigotry to further its cause, is it any wonder we’re left with this “caricature”?

Make no mistake, this is no caricature drawn within the last year of campaigning. When someone is in the public eye for long enough, you generally get a pretty good sense of who that person really is. Bill Clinton was a guy whose personal addictions (food and women, mostly), led to heart surgery and a blow job focused impeachment. George W. Bush is the guy you want to have beer with, but in retrospect may not have been intellectually curious enough to make an effective steward of our nation.

Hillary Clinton, for all Cohen’s cocktail party chats with her is, for lack of a better description, “a hungry hack, a Janus looking both forward and backward and seeming to stand for nothing except winning.” That is an image of her own making.

Perhaps Cohen should spend less time at those Washington cocktail parties and spend a few weeks wandering the streets of the real America. Perhaps all journalists should have their blackberry, and expense accounts taken away and be dropped into mid-America with nothing but a pair of Levi jeans, a Gap t-shirt and their wits and forced to live as real Americans live.

If nothing else, seeing these pompous assholes milking cows, stamping sheet metal in a rusted factory, or doing some other Paris-Hilton-Simple-Life-esque chores for a month or two would be great fodder for a new reality series. Call it The Real Life.

No responses yet

Hopes of Democratic Fatigue Are Overblown

Apr 23 2008 Published by under Barack Obama, Candidates, Democrats, Elections, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Political Parties, Politics, Republicans

I’ve spent most of the last 12 hours listening to various pundits predict this protracted Democrat campaign will weaken the eventual nominee in the fall. Some sort of voter fatigue will befall the electorate who will then be less inclined to vote for the Democrats in November. The Democrats, fractured by the race, will fail to coalesce around the nominee and help McCain win.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say for the record I think this is a bunch of crap.

First, people in this country have incredibly short attention spans. Any fatigue present in June is unlikely to carry until November. It’s just not like us to carry that baggage for five months. This whole notion stems from the fact that nobody has seen a race like this in generations. People are used to these fire-and-forget campaigns. The argument assumes that people prefer that and don’t want something more. I think there is ample evidence, just in the water cooler conversations, that people are engaged in this, have picked a candidate to back (regardless of their party) and want to see who wins.

That’s significantly different from an election plagued by fatigue.

Second, the Democrats will end up with a huge advantage coming out of this. Having been forced to compete in all 50 states, they will have a ground game in all 50 states. They will have built the machinery to compete in places the GOP has ignored for decades either because it was “safe” red territory or because the states simply weren’t on the radar.

Voters in these states will be intimately aware of the Democrat, will have seen countless ads for them, will have seen them in their state. The GOP, by comparison, will have no exposure, name ID solely based on their name, not their message, and no organizers. That’s going to make more states competitive.

I think hopes for Democrat burnout are overstated. I think pundits underestimate the people and the race. Hopefully, the GOP apparatus doesn’t make the same mistake.

6 responses so far

Barack Obama Marx OR Is Obama Really Religious?

Apr 14 2008 Published by under Barack Obama, Candidates, Pandering, Politics

There’s been a lot of chatter about Barack Obama’s remarks to wealthy San Francisco donors regarding midwest voters.

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Most of the chatter focuses on Barack’s apparent elitism. The disdain through which he views those Americans in fly-over country is apparent. More than a couple of people have compared him to John Kerry.

What seems to be lost though, is the question of Obama trying to have it both ways. On the one hand, he tells the liberal elite wing of the party that religion is just a crutch for those who have fallen on hard economic times. On the other hand, Obama talks freely about his professed faith in God.

The bigger question we should be asking is which is the real Obama? Is Obama someone who shares the faith of millions of American’s? Or is Obama someone who fervently believes, as Marx once claimed, that religion is simply the opiate of the people?

Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions.

Now I’m no linguistic expert, but Obama’s words sound an awful lot like Karl’s. People in distress turn to religion and religion prevents them from actually taking control of their own destiny. All Obama left out is the suggestion that we should abolish religion.

Compare that to his statements on religion earlier this year.

But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side of Chicago, I felt God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.

But is Obama’s dedication to God one of true heartfelt commitment or one of political expediency. From the Christian Science Monitor piece referenced above:

[Obama] was largely indifferent toward religion until he moved to Chicago in 1985 for a job organizing impoverished South Side residents in campaigns for better jobs, schools, and housing. As the recent college graduate went from church to church to enlist clergy in his causes, he heard an oft-repeated refrain: What church do you belong to?

“He really came here with a very strong passion about how can we change things, and he understood the churches as being a vehicle for doing that,” recalls the Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of the Saint Sabina Church, a Catholic church on the South Side, who has known Obama since his early days in Chicago. But he also “realized that with some churches there would be a credibility issue if he were organizing churches but didn’t have a home church.”

If Obama wanted to organize religious people, he understood that he needed to appear religious.

Obama’s remarks to the liberal elite of San Francisco reek of elitism, to be sure. More disconcerting for millions of religious American’s should be the question of whether Obama is actually a man of faith, or simply wearing the robes of piousness to lead them down a trail. I’m not a religious person myself, but even I am aware of Matthew 7:15 which warns:

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

2 responses so far

The Perfect Storm Is Gathering Against McCain

Apr 04 2008 Published by under Barack Obama, Candidates, Democrats, Elections, Fundraising, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Political Parties, Politics, Republicans, The FEC

With reports yesterday that Obama raised another $40 million dollars last month McCain’s team needs to be seriously concerned. This $40 million, when added to January’s $32 million, brings his total reported Q1 haul to $127 million. That’s a whopping chunk of change.

Granted he’ll have to spend an awful lot of it to beat Hillary. He’s currently out raising her almost two to one. He’ll blow through a lot of cash between now and the nomination, but anything that’s left (assuming he eschews the general election funding provided by the FEC) can go straight to his general election account. If he continues raising $30 million or more per month, he could conceivably end up up more in the bank to transfer than McCain will get from the FEC funds.

What should really make McCain nervous, though, is the situation at the FEC and the fact that he may not get those funds. The FEC is currently missing commissioners and cannot count a quorum. Without a quorum present, the FEC cannot approve the disbursement of those Presidential funds to the McCain camp.

The Senate won’t recess because they do not want Bush to make recess appointments. The Republicans and Democrats have relatively inflexible positions on the current crop of appointments, and don’t appear likely to blink. With that stalemate in place, and no reason for the Democratic majority to overturn it, McCain could well enter the fall campaign completely unarmed.

McCain’s team is currently raising about $12 million per month, but blowing through it just as fast. If they’re not banking any dough, it is possible the campaign will enter September without any money at all. Now, the GOP could take great offense to the Senate Dems using procedural maneuvers to keep their candidate broke and rally in large numbers to show J-Mac the money love. If that’s going to happen, though, it needs to start soon.

The Bush team in 2004 considered skipping the general fund and raising money, but they determined the costs would simply be too great. To raise the $75 million they’d be giving up, they would actually need to raise about $150 million – due largely to the high overhead of the Ranger/Pioneer model of fundraising.

Obama’s model has a much lower overhead. It’s possible he could raise vast sums of money on a small dollar model. He’ll have a lot more ready cash for a much smaller investment of time.

McCain’s team needs to get on the stick and go open-source. They should be e-mailing their list with the facts I have just laid out, and urging every single Republican to give to McCain. They could even be honest and upfront about it. Here’s a sample of the e-mail I would send.

While we may not have seen eye to eye on issues in the past, I hope I can count on you now. We, as a party, face an incredible challenge. In just 7 months, I will face the best funded Democrat to run for President in generations. As the liberals are stuffing the campaign coffers of my opponent, their allies in the US Senate are working to deny you a candidate.

As the Senate holds up confirmation of commissioners to the FEC, I am awaiting approval of the funds that will carry our party’s message in the fall. Roughly $80 million dollars is riding on a high stakes game of chicken. The Democrats want us to back down. They want to hold my campaign hostage and prevent the disbursement of the money we need for the election in an effort to deliver a defeat to the President.

Whether you agree with me, and whether you support President Bush and his policies, we must unite as a party, and beat the Democrats at their own game. How? We must ask every single Republican to make a donation of just $5 to this campaign.

If every single Republican who voted for President Bush in 2004 gave $5, we could unite as a party, raise more than $300 million dollars, and fund our election without the FEC.

Take the power out of the Democrats hands. Show them the people of this great nation will not allow them to deny half of us our candidate and our vote. Show them that like any family we may have our internal squabbles, but we will not hesitate to come together against someone who threatens us.

Please, ask every Republican you know to give $5. If you can give more, or they can give more, please ask them to do so. We

That’s it. Begin a fundraising drive to combat the situation you are in. Beat Obama at the small dollar giving and use the fact that the Democrats are purposefully blocking the FEC appointments in an effort to screw you against them.

If they don’t do something, and keep spending money under the theory that the FEC situation will be resolved before August, they run the real risk that they go into the general out gunned to the tune of $150 million or more.

No responses yet

Why the Wright Flap May Help, Not Hurt, Obama

Mar 17 2008 Published by under Barack Obama, Candidates, Democrats, Elections, Politics

With all the digital ink being spilled over Obama’s connection to Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Wright’s controversial remarks, two things that may ultimately help Obama may come out of this.

First, consider the results of a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll conducted last week. The survey results indicate that since December the number of people who believe Obama is a Muslim jumped from 8% to 13%. That’s a 62% increase in only three months. How many “middle of the road” Americans received the “Obama is a Muslim” e-mail from friends and either read it or passed it to someone else? Now pretend your Obama and the “whisper” campaign is that you’re really a dirty terrorist in hiding. Anything that focuses the public attention on your twenty year membership is a Christian church may be a very, very good thing.

The downside to the focus on your church is the random ranting of your pastor. So what do you do? The same thing you did with Farakhan – you distance yourself from the specifics. In this case, however, you focus on the Christian connection. Obama did just that with his Huffington Post column.

I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it’s on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue. …

As I have written about in my books, I first joined Trinity United Church of Christ nearly twenty years ago. I knew Rev. Wright as someone who served this nation with honor as a United States Marine, as a respected biblical scholar, and as someone who taught or lectured at seminaries across the country, from Union Theological Seminary to the University of Chicago. He also led a diverse congregation that was and still is a pillar of the South Side and the entire city of Chicago. It’s a congregation that does not merely preach social justice but acts it out each day, through ministries ranging from housing the homeless to reaching out to those with HIV/AIDS.

This post may actually be the perfect response to the kerfuffle. It acknowledges Wright’s comments, denounces them in no uncertain terms, and then goes on to highlight 20 years as a Christian and a life spent fighting for social justice. It’s actually brilliant.

In All’s Fair, the book he co-wrote with wife Mary Matalin, James Carville explains the Clinton debate tactics in very specific terms – Answer, explain, attack. That’s exactly what Obama has done with this response. He answers the charge (I denounce this), explains why he believes the charge is unfounded (this is a guy who fought for civil rights and continues to do so), and attacks the whisper campaign by focusing on his religious identity. The fact that he has done this using the Internet should force the response to go viral. Had he written the same column in the New York Times, it would have been forgotten tomorrow. On HuffPo, it will be chattered about by bloggers for some time to come.

In all, this is a very crafty ploy by Obama. He could have followed the traditional PR tricks and half-denounced the connection while trying not to give the story legs. Instead, he tackled it directly and used the opening to push the “I’m a long-time Christian” very forcefully.

One response so far

« Newer posts Older posts »