Letters to the Editor
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"the GOP Slime machine and the mouthbreathers that eat up their vile produce don't DO "logic and reasoning.""
That just doesn't seem to be working out well for them, though, does it?
This is why we need to fight back. "These people are irrational. They're filled with fear. They're crooks."
The Party of Fear. The Party of Fools.
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What Obama Has Going for Him
Is that he's never turned into a "Senator." You know what I mean, the kind of way of talking that Dan Quayle and Lloyd Bentsen used with one another, "Senator, . . . ." It's antithetical to the natural rhythms of his speech, and to the way he thinks. So he talks to people, listens to people and makes an impression that way.
John Kerry was nothing but a Senator. John McCain is nothing but a Senator. Hillary Clinton was a Senator before she was ever in the Senate.
Obama will be able to get past all the muck because he can communicate with Americans past it. And when he debates McCain, McCain (who has no instinct himself for the jugular) will be eaten for lunch.
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Obama
I'm not in love with Obama as the Dem candidate, there's a large part of me that believes Hillary would make a better President (and Edwards would have been best of the three), but I'd still gladly support him in the election.
One big reason why is that I think he could win this thing in a landslide. And if he does so after campaigning in the style that he has to date - where he deals almost dismissively with the petty, vacuous attacks - he'll deliver a major blow to the wingnut attack machine. They'll never go away of course, but I'd love to see these idiots put in their place. To have them reminded that most of the country doesn't give a crap about what they think.
Again, I might add. McCain has already kicked them in the nuts, Obama I'm pretty sure can deliver a more painful and permanent blow.
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How Obama is Different
Unlike Kerry and Gore, Obama has made "petty bickering"--the problem of trivialized American political discourse--a central plank in his platform. Central in his stump speech.
The smearing and sliming that is surely coming from the Dark Side actually plays to Obama's strength--by proving his point. I believe he will be able to articulate this very well to the electorate, much better than Kerry or Gore ever did. And if his campaign is skillful, he can turn such sliming attempts back on McCain, the Straight Talker.
Yesterday, as has been the case in all primaries I'm aware of, both Obama and Clinton received more votes individually than the entire republican field has collectively. The task before the GOP operatives is daunting--they must disgust, demoralize, and deflate this juggernaut of democratic and independent voters. I imagine it will be the ugliest and dirtiest spectacle in modern political history. I hope american voters are prepared to gag, wretch, and vomit. But after they've tried their worst, and maybe even because they've done their worst I believe that Obama will prevail.
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Backlash? I hope so
GG asks:
Has it ever happened before? What past events would you point to as empirical evidence that this can happen and of how it will work?
Didn't the general voting public pretty much reject the Clinton Impeachment nonsense? Granted that did not result in any change of power, but you could (I think you have) argue that had more to do with Democratic dysfunction than the ability of Fox News to drive public opinion. The 23-percenters remained just that, and Gore got a half million more votes than Bush in the year 2000.
Resistance to the right-wing noise machine comes in two prongs: first is the ability of liberals/progressives to deal with the onslaught (many web-based organizations mostly that did not really exist in 2000), and second is that the right wingers seem to have shot their wad. Their platforms are so bankrupt of anything but rhetoric that even the angry suburban white guy has begun to notice. Even better, the formerly apathetic have begun to notice -- what else is driving Obama's momentum? Just look at the ratio of turnout numbers between Democrats and Republicans and the whole story is right there.
Side note: I am a Hillary supporter who, if Obama gets the nomination, will do everything for him that I would have done for her to get him to the White House. No other course makes sense to me.
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I've got to hand it to you
the media-connected, Swiftboat-spewing operatives who function in the shadows and the sewers - whew! only in my dreams could I come up with such polite vituperation. But I also agree with you. Our political discourse should be about principles, and ideas, and approaches instead of the viscous smears and lies we currently get, mostly perpetrated by the Republican party who seem to be concept free except for their cheering section chanting We Want Power, We Want Power, We Want Power.
Unfortunately, I'm also a realist (or, as some of my more trenchant critics would have it, a cynic). Not long ago, a friend of mine asked me what pundits I looked up to. I told him, None of 'em. When it comes to opinions, I roll my own - I don't need to borrow anybody else's. So all I want, as Joe Friday used to say, is "Just the facts, ma'am". Unfortunately, the pundits are notorious for giving you no facts, only selected facts, or even "facts" they make up. Since many people seem to rely on these pundits for their opinions, I don't see anything changing until the American people start thinking for themselves instead of relying on somebody else to do their thinking for them.
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Just sent this off to Lisa Schiffren
How come the evil, freedom-hating commies rejected racism and were open to normal relationships between people, regardless of "race," at a time when your "All-men-are-created-equal" free-market-democracy team was mostly shaking their collective heads because the time just wasn't yet right for real change -- if they weren't actually blowing up black churches? Ask yourself that.
Also, the implication of your social-political model is that Obama's mother must have been secretly Jewish. Why do you brush that possibility under the rug?
I am truly looking forward to her riposte.