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Monday, August 04, 2008

So the fearmongering and racism is working. Does that surprise anyone?
Posted by Jill | 1:08 PM
Joe Sudbay notes that Rasmussen now has Obama and McCain in a statistical tie. This should surprise no one. I've been saying since this election season really got into gear that the next president would be the Republican.

Despite the large number of Democratic candidates in the beginning, I always knew that this nomination was going to come down to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards. And I always figured none of them could possibly win.

With Edwards the biggest problem was the recurrence of his wife's illness, but the media's willingness to ignore everything the man said and talk for weeks about his haircut and his house, showed me that he couldn't win. And you can bet that if he were the nominee right now, the nothing-but-hearsay Story We Will Not Repeat would be the nonstop topic on MSNBC.

Hillary Clinton certainly had the ability to fight back, but he came with steamer trunkloads of baggage and a an attention-hogging husband who was going to be a problem no matter what. And let's face it -- this country still doesn't like women who fight back and who stand up for themselves. Look at the adulation given Cindy McCain, whose job is to be a pretty, smiling cipher out on the campaign trail, and the attention given to Michelle Obama for daring to speak her mind. Hillary Clinton might have gone after the McCain smears with both barrels, but then we would have heard nonstop about what a castrating bitch she is and how much white working class males, who we all know are the only voters who matter in Media-Land, are threatened by her.

That left Barack Obama. The reason I didn't support Obama at the start was because of this annoying habit he has of believing that you can somehow do business with Republicans; that you can somehow reach across the aisle without pulling back something other than a bloody, gnawed stump. These people play for keeps, and with the exception of Bill Clinton, whom they hated because he was capable of getting just as down and dirty as they did, every Democratic nominee since I've been old enough to vote has made the same mistake of believing that Americans vote with something other than their worst impulses.

And their worst impulses are getting a good workout with Barack Obama.

I keep talking about this friend of mine who has decided to believe all the smear e-mails. I talk about her because she is not a Rush Limbaugh conservative. She is a centrist who insists she votes for the person, not for the party. She hates George W. Bush, she hates what he's done to this country. She dislikes John McCain, too. This is a woman who has a one-year-old granddaughter that she loves more than life itself. If she had to gouge out her own eye with a meat fork so that this baby could see, she would do it in a heartbeat. And yet she is not going to vote for Barack Obama, because she fears that he's "not loyal enough to this country." Why does she believe this? Because of e-mails she's received; e-mails that reach into that dark, scared, childish place in all of us and tap into our fears. John McCain may be awful, but at least he's not "a ni--" as Mel Brooks said in Blazing Saddles, a movie that is almost no longer funny because it's so spot-on. And he doesn't have a funny name that sounds like an Arab terrorist and his wife is a little lady, not someone with brass balls and her own opinions.

John McCain may be awful, but at least with him we know what we're going to get -- more screwing over of the middle class, more oil wars, more fear, more evisceration of our Constitution. In other words, more of the same. And at least he's not "a ni--".

Barack Obama, like Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, and John Kerry before him, wants to believe that "The American people are too smart to believe this." That kind of hope and optimism may be laudable, but it doesn't win elections. Because the truth is no, the american people are NOT too smart to believe it -- not when Republicans are right there with their sharp metal probe poking at the reptilian brain 24 x 7 on cable news.

And so here we are, with a Republican party in disgrace, led by as appalling a man as has ever held the office of the presidency. That party has put up a senile old man with anger management problems and a need to win a war at all costs to get over his Vietnam demons. And he's going to win. Because the Democrats Just. Don't. Get. It. They don't get that the media is not their friend. They don't get that Americans respond to fear every time. They don't get that if they would just STAND for something, they might do better.

Either that or Mr. Brilliant is right and it's all a scam and they're all on the same team...and the Democrats are only there to make you think you have a choice.

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10 Comments:
Blogger Bob said...
This election turns on one issue: skin color. Imagine Obama as a white senator from suburban Illinois & tell me he wouldn't have 280 electoral votes in the bag, from Maine to Minnesota & down to Missouri, & the west coast, before we even start counting states like Florida & Colorado. McCain is a very weak candidate. Obama is a great candidate; & by that I mean his ability to be larger than his specific platform. Americans have no patience with small print. So why the resistance? He's black.
8/4/08, 3:25 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Great post; bad shit.
8/4/08, 5:06 PM  
Blogger Jennifer Briney said...
You just articulated my worst fears and you make way too much sense.
8/4/08, 6:49 PM  
Blogger Comrade Misfit said...
Surprised, no. Saddened, indeed.
8/4/08, 7:30 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...
Why is it that John Edwards' love bastard is mere "hearsay," but McCain calling his wife a "cunt" is taken as gospel fact here?
8/4/08, 7:41 PM  
Blogger adam k. said...
I love Jill and her writing, but I think it's a bit alarmist (and unhelpful) to send out an angry, hands-thrown-up-in-despair, "I told you so!" type post at this point, 3 months out, insisting Barack Obama will lose and the sky will fall and everything was for naught. Yes, the polls have tightened. Yes, it sucks. But I believe Obama knows what he's doing, and there's plenty of time and plenty of things left to happen before the election. I honestly can't see for the life of me how he loses this thing, and I still don't think it'll happen. He's too good at the ground game, too good in debates, too charismatic, too likeable, too f*cking GOOD a candidate, in every sense of the word, to lose this thing. By most accounts, he STILL has nearly 270 electoral votes ready and waiting, national polls be damned, with a jillion battleground states he can pick up. We just have to stay engaged, stay with him, volunteer, donate, get out the vote.

The way this'll be won is by getting the word out about Barack, and then getting people to the polls. It's about us doing the work. We can't just sit and bitch about people's stupidity, we have to go out there and make this happen. We really don't have a choice.
8/5/08, 12:12 AM  
Blogger Cujo359 said...
I wouldn't be shocked if Obama won, but I really don't expect it. You've hit on most of the reasons. The problem is that he won't stand for something. He quite clearly never has. That's the only thing voters might rally around - hope that this guy really will be different, instead of just talking the talk. It won't happen, because it's not in Obama's nature. He'll lose unless McCain does something so stupid that you wouldn't even think him capable of it.
8/5/08, 3:24 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
I agree with Adam K... hey, if Obama loses, maybe it's because too many Democrats -- like you -- are fucking pussies who fold at the first sign of difficulty.

Seriously, fuck you. And fuck your racist cunt friend. Fuck the two of you. You're old, you're fat, you're weak, and you're cowards.
8/5/08, 6:43 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
I didn't think Kerry could lose. Barack can lose by not really taking a stand, by continuing to alienate his base, and truthfully him running against a white man is working against him. I know of several people who simply will not vote for him for "reasons," but they will vote for McCain, no matter how much McCain sounds like W., hated by these same people. They just don't want a black man as president.
8/5/08, 6:44 AM  
Blogger Melina said...
I think that Obama will win, but thats just me...and Im a pessimist in general. I don't know how much difference it will make when he does because there are so many problems to unravel that it may take 4 to 8 years to even begin to get back on a good cycle...by then the american people forget the Bush years and...here we go again!
How much it helps or doesnt to write about one's feeligns of hopelessness or despair...I dont know...but the nature of blogging is to open discourse and to espress your feelings. Its a different type of reporting, IMO, and its perfectly acceptable to express this stuff. I dont think that a few of us who know about the voting machines and know about whats going on in the party expressing dismay is gonna change the outcome or how someone else is gonna vote.

Im not one for polls, especially this early. I think its just an M$M storymaking process that serves no one but the media. But then sometimes exit polls don't match the outcome of the faulty voting machines and they serve more of a purpose than the obvious...

The problem in this country has more to do with people like the Rat above who wants to shut down discourse by name calling rather than explaining what the weakness is or why we fold...is there something constructive to say there? Otherwise, its just a waste of all of our time. Hey we can also listen to Rush if we want that line...

IF john McCain becomes our next president, is it gonna make one rat idiot's bit of difference if you or I called each-other old or fat? YOur young generation, Rat, will be in endless middle east conflict with leadership that is going to continue to ruin your economy going forward. The streets will be full of returnign soldiers with big problems, without a VA prepared to help them
There is something to be said for being "old", in your terms, youngster, because we know, from experience, that you surely will not feel the way you do today in 5 or 10 or even 20 years...we've been where you are, and we've felt the kind of rage and idiocy that you're feeling....we've also learned that this sort of...oh was it TROLLING that was just covered in the NY Times magazine?...leads nowhere but to the ruin of you and your own future!
Its merely a sign of your lack of education and direction. Your disaffected feeling of entitlement ruins YOU...and your own children...will you still be blaming us old fat people when you are old and fat? And what good will it do then, unless you , at some point, get off your ass and try to become part of the solution. Im sorry, but hacking and trolling is not a real solution...it points nothing out that one cant find on any radio dial or TV that carries FAUX news.
If we are feeling hopeless, well...its your generation and children that are gonna be carrying this forward...so buck up, try to learn something from everything and everyone, even of you find it alarmist or you disagree. You may not realize it now because parents can be so lame, but we do know one or two discreet things, if that, and you can cull a little something if you try a little anger management.

Oh, and if 50 is the new 40, and 40 is the new 30, and my grandfather is 98 and recovering very well from near death; so very well that he is continuing his philanthropic work with the geriatric community...well, sonny, your opinion of what "old" is, makes you look incredibly ...er...young!(and thats not a compliment!)

don't let the door hit you on the way out!;-)
Oh, and Barry...that applies to you and your senseless (for such an intelligent guy) grasping at straws here too, when the picture is SO much bigger than the tabloids at the checkout.
(...and, if you must!... with Edwards there isnt any real evidence, whereas McCain's coworkers in the government report this sort of behavior all the freakin' time...its a documented pattern, not just a rumor...OK? Please turn off that Rush and O'Reilly on the radio and do some research! There, you wasted some of all of our time...you happy?)
8/5/08, 9:52 AM  
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