Air America’s Tom Hartmann had a fascinating take on the McCain-Rove attack commercials, especially the ad that calls Obama "the One." While critics like David Gergen say they are code for uppity, designed to get out the racist vote, Hartmann said "the One" ad is code for end-time evangelicals.
A small group? They bought 68 million copies of the Left Behind series. The code of the highly misleading ads is that Obama is the Antichrist. These "communities of interest" are big enough to tip an election — or make it close enough to steal — especially when the corporate media continue to give McCain a free ride on the issues.
Obama may be running a very smart campaign: refusing to get in the gutter, showing a willingness to compromise on drilling if it also wins support for alternative energy and accountability for the oil companies. But enough Americans may be too addled, too addicted to promises of instant gratification, too ignorant to pay attention. Does that mean it’s foolish to hammer McCain on the issues? Not at all.
Here’s a partial list of what Obama and Democrats should be relentlessly pushing:
1. A lethally incompetent federal government, as shown most clearly by the response to Hurricane Katrina. This was no simple bumbling by the fall-guy Brownie, but a systemic outgrowth of Republican contempt for government, putting hapless cronies in critical positions, putting off infrastructure needs, underfunding, etc.
2. Corruption growing out of the vast privatization that has happened under Republicans, where GOP stalwarts reap billions of dollars worth of no-bid contracts. The results include shoddy wiring of American bases in Iraq that have electrocuted U.S. soldiers.
3. Torture. Read Jane Mayer’s impeccably researched The Dark Side, about how Vice President Cheney and a group of right-wingers hijacked the federal government and caused the United States to break its own and international laws in the horrific treatment of terror suspects. We know some were totally innocent. Now the stonewalling and secrecy continue because the Cheney cabal is afraid of prosecution. But this is a shameful, outrageous, illegal repudiation of American values.
4. The Iraq debacle and its larger place in national security and foreign policy. This unprecedented act of pre-emptive war by the American nation was brought about by cooked intelligence and has led us into a terrible morass. Much low-hanging fruit can be found here, and then reach higher. The betrayal of Valerie Plame and her entire secret operation. The secret energy task force and today’s give-away of Iraqi oil to the corporate giants. The squandered opportunity to catch bin Laden. Afghanistan. A less safe America in the world. The treasure and blood lost.
5. Crony capitalism and its effects on the economy. Deregulation, consolidation, anti-union laws, neglect of anti-trust and fair trade laws, outrageous executive pay, sending jobs offshore, bad trade deals. Meanwhile, the average American loses health care, benefits, job security and sees his or her income stagnate or fall backwards over the past eight years. And remember, the Republicans still want to privatize Social Security.
6. Eight years of neglect in the face of obvious big changes in the world. Thus we have done nothing to prepare for inevitable high energy prices or climate change.
That’s a start. It might seem backward looking — and indeed, Obama must project a Reaganesque optimism and forward-looking platform. But the above issues are important for two reasons. First, decency, justice and a future for the republic demand accountability and a rollback of executive over-reaching, incompetence and lawbreaking. Second, John McCain was a part of all this and continues to push the same policies.
And for those of you who think there’s no difference between the parties or candidates: Would we be in the current mess if the Supreme Court hadn’t handed the 2000 election to George W. Bush — or if Ohio hadn’t been stolen in 2004?
I fear that Obama’s positions are eroding on a nearly daily basis:
https://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080804/ap_on_el_pr/obama
It may be that he will become known as The Great Waffler, should he manage to take office. I say this as someone of progressive sensibilities who would rather see even a wishy-washy and increasingly “centrist” Obama as president than McCain.
Those of us on the left wish Obama would voice our concerns but that’s not what this campaign will be about. It can’t be since the corporate media determines through some unwritten process the narratives and parameters of the debate itself. We may be lucky that its McCain bias isn’t worse than it is.
Obama can’t bring up torture since it’s not a front-burner issue. Worse, the public seems to favor it. Even Katrina doesn’t work for Obama since Republicans successfully blurred the incompetence issue by shifting the onus to poor black residents. He will backtrack on drilling and pirouette on FISA and speak quite softly about affirmative action.
We have to trust Obama and his campaign here. While all the fundamentals favor Democrats, the national conversation is still tilted to the right. It’s why we’re not talking about a single-payer health care system, global warming, a Supreme Court filled with right-wing ideologues, or the clearly illegal activities of Bush and Cheney. As righteously angry as we are, we don’t have the media, the echo chambers or the megachurches. We have some blogs, Keith Olbermann, and Jon Stewart.
I have liberal friends who continually surprise me with right-wing talking points they innocently voice. I ask them where they heard what they did and usually they can’t say. This is the nature of our problem and Obama’s. We’re a nation where the megaphones are on the other side. We’re all hearing stuff. Often it’s wrong, stupid, or immoral. You wonder how anyone could believe it. Watch a McCain TV ad and you begin to understand.
I hate the terminology “left” and “right” because it is completely meaningless. I hate the term “progressive” because everyone thinks their particular pet idea is obviously the path to “progress” so this term is worse than meaningless.
The Republican campaign has a solid philosophy behind it: you can appeal to both criminals and law-and-order advocates simultaneously so long as you also advocate dishonesty and concentrate on a “tough guy” image.
When you think about it, the “progressives” just don’t represent anything self-consistent other than their agreement to all disagree with one another (which is fair enough, ineffective but respectable). The progressive cause is equally anti-intellectual to the Republicans, and just as dishonest but when it comes to appealing to the idiots, Repubs will win every time.
However, don’t panic about the polls. They were all calling Hillary the clear frontrunner for a year or more until she was finally the loser. We can rely on those polls to be inaccurate.
I still think Obama is in with a chance. He just has to relentlessly drive the conversation back to the US economy and he can be sure that McCain will have nothing to say. In the next month, the US economy will be bad enough to ensure that the media is unable to hide it.