Letters to the Editor

• Shawn

  [Read the article: Obama, Clinton and the black-brown divide]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  You make some points with which I agree- for instance, that the fascisti will spend megabucks driving Obama's negatives up. the balance to that argument is that ms. Clinton's negatives are already in the high forties. So, it's a matter of some concern if he can withstand what they'll throw at him. We don't know that. I sure don't. What I do now is how he has responded to the things the Clintons, with two decades of national experience, have confronted him with. To me, he seems close to unflappable. That doesn't mean unbeatable. The republikans stumbled into nominating the one candidate that will be hard to beat. Against Mitt the Twit, or Rudy the Patootie, it would have been a cakewalk. Not now. However, when you look at electoral math, you have to discount the means by which the nomination is secured. Odd, but, I would opine, undeniably true. No scenario I can imagine would have Honest John taking NY or California. Much of Hillary's "base" comes from the "big state/small state" dichotomy. It's false. Of greater concern is the pattern that has been in place pretty much since the eighties: the fascisti take the Confederacy, we take the coasts, and the election comes down to, say, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. I will concede, for the sake of discussion, that even if Obama galvanizes the black vote like never before, and the young vote that typically spends the first Tuesday in November with a beer bong, that it's unlikely- in some cases impossible- that he will make inroads in Utah, Wyoming, or the deep south. But would she? If so, how? The reason I asked about where you've lived is that we have made homes in the intermountain west, Hawaii, the Ozarks, and California. It's my sense, totally unsubstantiated, that the redneck vote, the pickup folks who listen to Toby Keith, are more likely to listen to him than to her. I wish this were not so. Hillary bears the burden of sins not of her own commission. They persist nonetheless. It is my firm conviction that we- all of us who claim to be progressive in any way- must swear a blood oath that we will vote Democratic in November. I sure do. If you and I, after a vitriolic weekend, can have a conversation, then we have to believe unity, and victory, are possible. Having worked in the McGovern campaign, and seen the results that night through tears, I try to be a realist. There's only one Saviour, and it's not Obama, and it's not Hillary. We need a leader. Being, as you might suspect, a word guy, I am swayed by the effect, disproportionate to rational analysis, that great speakers and writers have had throughout history. Churchill, when England was toast. Lincoln when a charge on a Pennsylvania field turned a tide that could have gone either way, or King and Kennedy (and LBJ, to give the man his due) finally bringing to bear the fruits of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. Words matter, and genius matters. It doesn't reduce itself to red and blue states, or to endlessly parsed demographic analysis. I think the election will be uncomfortably close no matter who's nominated. The only coherent point I might have made this weekend was that Hillary has no upside. She is what she is. we'd be lucky to have her. But I do think that no individual galvanizes the republikan base the way she does. turnout. Who's the most determined to vote? That's the reason, I think, that Clinton supporters tend to discount caucus states, which tend to measure intensity as much as they do anything else. Bottom line, after Tuesday, Obama will have a numerical advantage in pledged delegates that only the most scorched earth counterattack by the Clintons can overcome. John McCain would be the beneficiary of that process. No, I do not propose that she concede. A rational process could be to our advantage. Victory at any cost could be our demise, and the death of more soldiers and civilians than we can imagine. tom

  Permalink Sunday, March 9, 2008 10:29 PM