Letters to the Editor
ljwalker53
Published Letters: 559 Editor's Choice: 9
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Religious Pandering By Any Other Name
[Read the article: Barack Obama: "Committed Christian -- Called to Bring Change"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]While I agree with Glenn Greenwald in principle -- that the Obama tactic is as questionable as Mike Huckabee's -- I stop there.
There is a problem with injecting religion into political campaigns, especially among Democrats. It's reductive in nature and pulls Democratic candidates farther to the right when what it needs is to rely on its own center-left compass.
Even more significant, though, is that as long as Republicans fan religion-as-politics (or, religion-in-politics, if you prefer) and Democrats fall over each other to out-religion them, "the issue" becomes religion/religious belief among voters, regardless of whether Democrats would use their religion differently to affect change. Democrats lose in this kind of battle.
There will always be "moral issues" voters who choose candidates based upon Biblical beliefs of right/wrong, good/evil, black/white. But these voters will rarely (if ever) vote for a Democrat, because of the underlying principles of the Democratic Party. Does it really matter then if they think that Barack Obama is a Muslim?
Democrats -- Barack Obama included -- do better when they keep to the high moral road of actually practicing their internal religious and/or spiritual beliefs to affect change for the greater good instead of pandering like Republican hucksters to "the faithful", in hopes that this time they will see the light and vote for a Democrat. That's a textbook definition of insanity.
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The Girl Got Game
[Read the article: The knives come out in South Carolina]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What in the world was Barack Obama expecting when he announced his candidacy for president? This is a political campaign, not an ice cream social.
Did he expect that his opponents were going to lie down and make nice just because he said so?
What I saw in last night's debate was the prospect of an Obama presidency: a man who votes "present" to avoid taking any heat on legislation; a man who makes a sneak attack against Bill Clinton in glowing comments about Ronald Reagan, rather than confront Clinton directly; a man who calls for universal healthcare then decides, apparently, that it's too much of a hot potato and thus drops it; a man who gives a great anti-war speech...in Chicago, but then votes in favor of continued funding for that war as a U.S. Senator; a man who is now actively pandering to religious fundamentalists in South Carolina by putting out literature saying he was "called" to his role (by G**, I'm guessing); and a man who supported the 2005 bankruptcy bill, but denies it (which, I guess he can get away with since the bill never passed). Need I go on?
Barack Obama does not handle confrontation or conflict well, as we are now seeing, in part because of last night's debate. He may speak quite eloquently about unity and building a new majority of Democrats, Independents and Republicans, but that's in an ideal political environment -- one we definitely don't have at this moment in our history.
Obama also has an arrogance, an entitlement -- always sliding just below the surface -- about his candidacy that is not reassuring. We have had seven years of arrogance in the White House, thank you very much. Do we really need another four or eight years of the attitude that took us into Iraq, waved-off the Kyoto Protocol, gave tax breaks to corporations and multi-millionaires?
Barack Obama seems incapable of understanding two things.
First, the type of change/transformation he calls for sounds a lot like the change/transformation proposed by Ronald Reagan. Theoretically it sounds great...until you get to the details, of which Senator Obama provides very few. Ask any working class stiff who lived through Ronald Reagan's "Reaganomics" if "Morning in America" worked for them. Thanks to that transformative boondoggle we're still putting our government and economy back together.
Second, come November Democrats will face the Republican machine, a la Karl Rove and other Macchiavellians. That Barack Obama seriously thinks he can take on that machine (no matter who the Republicans put forth) and win would be laughable were it not so arrogant and naive. That machine will slice, dice, chop and shred Barack Obama and hand him his b***s on a plate on their way back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Hillary Clinton on the other hand can give thrice as good as she gets. She's a b***-busting, strong woman who has more understanding of policy-making in her little finger than Barack Obama or John Edwards have between them. It would take both Obama and Edwards to match her in political shrewdness or toughness, foreign and domestic policy negotiations, knowledge of the sweeping Washington political system, and wide understanding of the world at-large.
The big puzzler here is that we keep insisting she "prove it" -- something we wouldn't even think about if Hillary Clinton were male...of any race or ethnicity!