Letters to the Editor
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The stakes, the working class, the math and a little history
Watching NOW and Bill Moyers Journal last night put the stakes in sharp relief for me. Especially the segment on Bill Moyers Journal about the working poor in Alabama unable to buy enough food to feed their families.
In print, it seems cliche, and it is. Meeting these people for a half hour segment with Moyers and his team humanizes their plight better than just reading that "there are poor people in Alabama" can.
Similarly, actually driving through a Pennsylvania ghost town with shuttered factories and mines triggers my "mirror neurons" better than simply hearing HillaryCain spout platitudes about how noble and proud and blah blah blah "those people" are.
Give me a break. If I lived in Central PA, I'd get my shotgun out and run Hillary or McCain off my (meager) property at the first sign of approach. I don't want to speculate what would happen if Obama were approaching. The point is, anyone in a suit and a press gaggle is viewed with an appropriate amount of skepticism.
I always drove through Central PA as fast as I could get away with when going between Pittsburg and Philadelphia and back (the Highway Patrol is notoriously evil and for as long as I have been alive the Ohio/PA border featured a large billboard proclaiming "Welcome to Pennsylvania, The Keystone State! The Speed Limit is /STILL/ 55.").
Sometimes it seems to me when reading this back and forth between Obama and Clinton supporters I wonder if everyone hasn't lost sight of the stakes, or if some of these people (Republican concern trolls aside) even care about the working poor, the uninsured, seniors on fixed income and soldiers and the families dealing with stop-loss, injury, death and cuts in benefits.
It seems to me that all things being equal, both candidates have programs so similar that attempting to differentiate them meaningfully requires a lot of parsing. The claims of more experience one way or another are easily batted away (Obama does have more experience as elected official, and Hillary, being older and a political spouse, simply has more years under her belt).
Where my opinion comes in is the question of character and elect-ability. And we all know where I fall. There is one candidate who I don't think has a chance in hell to win in November and one who I think does.
As for the history part, I want everyone to think about the last few losers we've run in the last 25 years and why they became the nominee. Put yourselves outside your comfort zone and imagine how the masses might feel about voting for Lady MacBeth.
Obama misspoke. Somehow he keeps coming out of it looking better to me than before. And I remind you, he was my fifth choice.
But in the final analysis, its McCain that we need to stop. In the end, I don't care if its Ralph Nader that takes him down. But I think we can all agree that isn't going to happen.