Hey Obama. What Flavor is the Kool Aid?

The analogy holds. I have observed glazed eyes, and irrational celebrity adoration given to this rather wan man with no ideas and a guy who we saw today who pandered to 2 uberrightwing papers in NV.

Mr. Democracy told us how transformational and wonderful Ronald Reagan was. Yes, even more than Bill Clinton, and of course Nixon. Like the comparison?

Mr. Obama it seems is a stinker. He’s not much of a Democrat as he heads into Reagan country and awaits any votes he can find in California no matter what he has to say or do.

This is what the bling followers do not see. Actually they want to be redeemed and delivered. White guilt. Black pride. Hillary hate. Bush rage.

What a cocktail, but he’s getting everybody drunk on it!

Personally, I have a hangover already seeing the Pied Piper Syndrome in full sway.

I’ve been thinking the same thing. Does Karl Rove run an “Advanced Slimy Tactics” course at a college/university somewhere? Too many of Obama’s tactics seem to come directly from that playbook.

There should be some concern of the phenomenon that creates such a cult, and that presupposes female submission to such a cult.

White guys seem to be losing their touch, and it’s fairy obvious that white women never had one to begin with – at least, with other women.

When all God’s children defer to a different God, does God still exist?

Apparently you don’t think the S-CHIP bill was important? Hillary was a leader in getting that passed.
There is a reason that conservative upstate New York reelected Hillary by an overwhelming margin. They know she has been an effective Senator, working hard to promote economic growth in that economically depressed region.
Hillary has worked for years on issues like education and child health. In Arkansas she successfully spearheaded a badly needed education reform bill, among many other things.
As for Bill, he was severely handicapped by the huge debt that had been run up by Reagan and Bush and yet he managed to turn this debacle around and put us on the road to fiscal health. That is no small thing, considering the unbelievable attacks that were being made on him (pre Monica, too) and the compliance of our media with these far right assaults. Under him, our economy was strong and it was not all because of a bubble. We were respected in the world. According to Richard Clarke, he was taking terrorism very seriously unlike his predecessors.

Lady,

Obama is playing to win.

Leading The Village By Their Collective Snouts

by tristero

Like Digby, I am puzzled – and appalled – by Obama invoking Reagan as some kind of icon of positve change. It’s like an aspiring surgeon saying he wants to follow in the bloody footsteps of Jack the Ripper, even if surely he disagrees with some of Saucy Jack’s procedures.

But Obama isn’t stupid, so he clearly is no Reaganite. Therefore, I am entertaining the possibility that perhaps this is an extremely clever rhetorical strategy on Obama’s part, complete with a dog whistle to people like you and me. Surely Obama knows modern rhetoric better than any other American politician and most cultural observers. So I think this may be a plausible explanation of what he’s up to:

Obama believes the country isn’t in love with conservative ideas per se. But both the voters – but especially the press – loved the way Reagan packaged them.

That is what I think Obama is saying – Republicans win merely on packaging, not on widespread support of their ideas. And he thinks he can win very wide support simply by associating liberal/moderate ideas with an updated version of Reagan’s manufactured persona. Going even further with this, Obama is addressing not “the American people” directly, but the people who serve as the mediator between politicians and the people, ie, The Village. This makes sense. After all, The Village are the ones who first have to accept and then spread a politician’s manufactured persona. As for Reagan’s conservatism, Obama understands that The Village neither knows or cares very much about that, beyond a few short slogans – “death tax, partial-birth abortion,” yadda yadda. In other words,

Obama is trying to appropriate the Reagan-Love that The Village feels – and by extension, felt by the voters they influence – for himself.

It doesn’t matter that it’s all illusion. By co-opting not the legacy of Reagan but simply his image within The Village, Obama makes it difficult for Republicans to paint themselves without a fight as the only heirs of the cheerful, confident, can-do America that Reagan’s myth says he was.

Now, we know Reagan was nothing like his image, And Obama knows we know. That’s the dog whistle. His Reagan-loving is just bait for a corrupt press corps fixated on images and perceptions. He is playing their own game against them, and he is much smarter than they.

A caveat: Obama truly is a genius at talking in a manner which makes you think he’s saying what you hope he’s saying. So I could be wrong and a President Obama could be Reagan-lite, God help us. But whatever Obama is up to here, I hope he knows what he’s doing. Despite his image, Reagan was a catastrophically bad president, the worst in my lifetime until Bush (and then his son).

Reagan is no one to hold up as an example to Democrats without a damn good reason. That is why I supect Obama has one.

Taters,thanks for calling what it is.
swords scimitars…

Larry, it would be great if Obama would do the same.

He’s packaged, creepy, opportunistic and his politics are far more to the right than Edwards or Hillary.

He is a product of the Pritzker Billions machine in Chicago, and his donors [large ones] are heavy corporate,nuclear,healthcare, etc. Hyatt Hotels. S&L’s….

His Bio can be found re: voting record carefully hidden on Google, and Washington Post will give you his voted in US Senate.

Some of his votes are even creepier. He is a lightweight who has limited experience and no outstanding track record as a legiislator.

He orates with preacher passion, and this is very hypnotic when we see the crowds on Preacher TV.
I find him thin in experience and vague on substance. He is no way qualified for this very daunting job. His background reveals inconsistencies about his so called votes and/or positions.

Maybe you ought to take a third look at Hillary, and then look beyond the Hillary/Obama duality at a third person?

Hillary, the great humanitarian and protector of children, has Madeleine “the price (of half a million dead Iraqi children under five years old) is worth it” Albright as her foreign policy advisor. Madeleine, I have learned today has jumped on the “let’s divide Iraq into three parts, against the will of 98% of its citizens” bandwagon (why is that not surprising?), which means that it is almost certain to be Hillary’s policy. After all, what is ignoring the will of all but a tiny percentage of Iraqis, breaking up a few million Iraqi families, and displacing a few millions more Iraqis, who have lived together with normal relations for centuries, when it comes to doing what the empress and her court have decided?

I also have a report (unconfirmed by me at present) that Madeleine “who cares about Iraqi children?” Albright (whom I personally saw hiding by lying on the back seat of her SUV as the moral coward fled the very effective extemporaneous, and very eloquent verbal onslaught of twenty-one-year-old Palestinian-American UC Berkeley valedictorian Fadia Rafidi’s response to her keynote address to the graduates) recommends (in addition to dividing Iraq, against the will of its citizens, into three ethno-sectarian parts) maintaining a force of some 40-60,000 or so for who knows how long. And why not? After all, it would be a shame to waste all those billions of dollars spent on very American military bases there. I mean, what use have Iraqis for miniature golf courses, bowling alleys, Pizza Huts, and Burger Kings?

I don’t know what the difference is since I’ve heard from friends who were on Kerry’s list that they are now receiving emails from the Obama campaign. And they are pissed.

probably the same people.

We used to refer to them as est holes in the Bay area. A buddy of mine went to a meeting of est in Marin county in the 70′s. He had only been back from VN for a few years and he was interested in someone (A young lady) who had dragged him there. It creeped him out and when they locked the doors and refused to let him leave, he punched his way out. I don’t think he saw her after that.

Well said Brighid.

I looked it up and posted the song that Rush Limbaugh coined. After reading the following I understand why Booty Shaker Johnson brought up Sidney Poitier.

The magical negro (sometimes called the mystical negro, magic negro, or our Magical African-American Friend) is a stock character who appears in fiction of a variety of media. The word negro, now considered archaic and offensive, is used intentionally to claim that the archetype is a racist throwback, an update of the “Sambo” and “savage other” stereotypes.

The magical negro is typically “in some way outwardly or inwardly disabled, either by discrimination, disability or social constraint,” often a janitor or prisoner.[5] He has no past; he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist.[6] He is the black stereotype, “prone to criminality and laziness.”[7] To counterbalance this, he has some sort of magical power, “rather vaguely defined but not the sort of thing one typically encounters.”[6] He is patient and wise, often dispensing various words of wisdom, and is “closer to the earth.”[3]

The magical negro serves as a plot device to help the protagonist get out of trouble, typically through helping the white character recognize his own faults and overcome them.[3] In this way, the magical negro is similar to the Deus ex machina; a simple way for the protagonist to overcome an obstacle almost entirely through outside help. Although he has magical powers, his “magic is ostensibly directed toward helping and enlightening a white male character.”[5] It is this feature of the magical negro that some people find most troubling. Although the character seems to be showing African-Americans in a positive light, he is still ultimately subordinate to European-Americans. He is also regarded as an exception, allowing white America to “like individual black people but not black culture.”[8]

To save the white protagonist, however, he would do anything, including sacrificing himself, as Sidney Poitier portrays in The Defiant Ones, the prototypical magical negro movie.[3] Note that Poitier’s character is also saved by the white protagonist.

Hmmm…the health care plan of Massachusetts or Mississippi’s.
Hillary’s is very simlar to MA’s where it is universal and Obama’s is like Mississippi’s – where there is a high number of uninsured. Fifteenmiilion folks uninsured is not universal health care.

>>> Why does a significant portion of America need to see itself as better, more gifted or morally elevated than the rest of the world?

Because it makes us feel better than the French, who bathe too rarely and smoke too much; the English, with their bad teeth and who drive on the wrong side of the road; and the Germans, who can’t help invading Poland and annexing Alsace and Lorraine periodically.

Also, it sure sells tickets to Rambo movies and keeps The Duke on in re-runs, doesn’t it?

Well, except for The Searchers, where The Duke plays a REAL deluded, compulsive racist murderer.

>>> Why bother with better politics when glittering magic is available; when we can aspire to a fairy-tale America that never existed?

Because Saint Ronnie (aka, The Addled Puppet Reagan) told us about The Shining City on a Hill.

Why waste our Beautiful Minds on ugly, poor, sick people, social inequity and crappy air and water when we can imagine ourselves the Smartest Sumbitches on the Planet…and, Hey! We have the Movies to back it up!

So, get your Jingo on, or be square! What, are you an Osama-lover?

U-S-A is Num-ber 1! U-S-A is Num-ber 1!

Those are perhaps the most well defended sets of three periods in history.