Letters to the Editor
Rambling Rose 22
Published Letters: 757 Editor's Choice: 6
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NOT THIS TIME
[Read the article: The haunting of the Democrats]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Here's my take:
The Clinton team, thinking she was already the nominee, failed to read the tea leaves last year when the majority of those polls were showing her with commanding leads. Those leads were based more on name recognition than anything else.
The Clinton team thought they were running in the General Election early last year. Even as they started getting competition in Iowa, they failed to re-organize the campaign for a Primary battle, and stayed in General Election mode through South Carolina. Hence, Hillary Clinton's remarks about LBJ getting Civil Rights legislation passed, and Bill Clinton's comments about Jesse Jackson's '88 campaign in South Carolina, were not racial in nature, but yet another example of their General Election mentality.
The Obama campaign, having nothing else to organize a campaign around except "change," did organize a better ground game to take advantage of his more youthful appeal and eek out small, but nonetheless startling, wins in small states' caucuses. The fact that the media didn't make much of his naturally strong appeal to African-American Democratic voters, especially in the early states like South Carolina, gave him an advantage he would have never had if he had been white. We all know that. Who would fault black Americans for voting for him? Nobody. But to report his wins like it was some kind of Democratic party mandate-in-waiting was wrong and more than intellectually dishonest of both the media and the OBama campaign.
It is the Obama campaign that has made the Democratic party the enemy in order to have a platform from which to organize a campaign and from which to run. The entire premise of Obama's campaign has been code for "I'm not Hillary Clinton." His overt and covert sexist remarks have caused problems with some white Democratic women too. His campaign, for all the talk about "a new kind of something or other," has been the same old-style political crap that we've all seen before.
What we are seeing now, and have been since Ohio (Texas, etc.) is a contest where the media's choice, Obama, has not been able to knock out a candidate who has been blamed, blasted, and bombarded unfairly, especially by the media, although he has had every advantage: money, organization, media favoritism, small caucus and southern states wins,a lead with the popular votes, and the Kennedys.
The media wants fresh blood for it's bottom line and failing viewership/readership. And THAT'S why they don't want Clinton again! Not because she is "a monster," as an Obama well-educated, elitist staffer politely put it when she thought no one was listening. And that's yet another example of how Obama's campaign has made the Party the enemy - "if you are not with us, then you are against us" kind of a "uniter."
Should Obama become the nominee, he still won't have anything but a speech from 2004 to offer this November. The GOP will slice and dice him. He and his "different kind of campaign" will look immature, naive, pie-in-the-sky, and too damn different for most American's standards by the time they get done with him. McCain will prevail as voters across America hold their noses once again, and vote for the familiar, more pragmatic looking and sounding candidate.
Those independent voters are NOT influenced by our and the GOP's ideological fervor! That's the mistake Obama supporters either don't understand - or don't care about. Even if his handlers have a ploy for bringing him back to center for the General, the GOP will keep reminding everyone he is anything but a centrist. And they would be right!
As a Democrat, I am increasingly less concerned about not passing all the liberal legislation in the world, or ramming it down the far right-wing's throats, than I am about NOT winning the White House again this November. Our country cannot handle another 4 years of same old/same old GOP dominated government. I don't want a "trial" product that is a member of Toast Masters!
The Democratic party understands that white women are a far more valuable commodity to electing the next President of the United States than any other segment of our society. White women vote, they turn out, and they always out-perform their male counterparts at the polls. Research bears out that Democrats do not win states like Ohio strictly through the vote in the urban areas. They win states like Ohio in the rural and suburban areas.
Of course, black Americans are important to the Democratic base. No one is suggesting otherwise. But their numbers do not translate into an automatic win for Democratics around the country, or even Ohio.
The ominous memory of 9/11 still lingers in this country. We all know how vulnerable we are. And we are not convinced that the Bush Doctrine, or Cheney firing guns, has made any of us feel more safe. That will still be in the back of the minds of many Americans too.
Security - job, homeland, economic, health - pick one! is what Americans are looking for now. And Barack Obama does not reek "security" as much as he reeks "change for the sake of change." And that's just not a strong enough proposition for many of us this November.
There's a reason why candidates have to pay attention to older Americans (older than 30, that is!). Because they vote - and they are not naive - and they are not easily bullshitted. And they don't want "change for the sake of change." They want answers and action and solutions - and they want it NOW.
McCain brings absolutely nothing to the table, and other than "Dr. Feel Good" with a chip on his shoulder, Obama brings more nuclear power plants as a reward to the industry giving him big bucks. Ugh! That's his idea of "new?"
I want a woman in the White House. And this woman will do just fine, thank you. She's better than the majority of the men who have landed there!