Totalitarian Tactics and an Illegitimate Nominee

Neither the main stream media nor the Democratic Party nor even the Obama campaign itself has come to terms with the damage Obama’s tactics have done to our Party. The damage was facilitated by the media and the big blogs.

Obama’s first task was controlling the media. Politicalcenter writes:

Taking their cue from totalitarian regimes, Obama developed his own propaganda arm which spewed facts and figures to the media and made false claims designed to keep controversial issues dealing with the candidate off of the main stream media. At the same time, Obama attacked in merciless ways those who voiced opposition on various Internet systems and sources, including the media who dared to question him, and has now stopped debates in favor of tuning his message against McCain again with the help of completely compliant media.

Consider that there’s a growing movement of determined progressives who are committed to Obama’s defeat. Our swelling numbers and strength of purpose are actually pretty shocking when you stop and think about it. The PUMA movement isn’t bitter or small; it’s radical and revolutionary: This is how parties are born and die. You are living history. SusanUnPC writes:

Hundreds of thousands of Hillary Clinton supporters will NEVER vote for Barack Obama. And a great many will vote for John McCain simply because they believe he is qualified to be president, and that Barack Obama is NOT qualified or experienced enough — and we’re worried sick about such a teleprompter-dependent neophyte being handed the toughest job in the world.

In addition to Obama’s race-baiting and thuggish tactics, Anglachel suggests that Obama’s problem is the illegitimacy of his nomination:

The increasing rejection of Obama by voters is a measure of his declining legitimacy. People who once thought they would gladly vote for him, like me, are now implacably opposed to him. He is no longer legitimate in our eyes…Participating in and profiting from the media hatred of the Clintons, throwing out accusations of racism to try to forestall criticism and inflate AA vote counts, encouraging people to be “Obamacans” not Democrats, the “Democrat for a Day” strategy, engaging in intimidation and threats to extract caucus votes, aggressively trying to monopolize money specifically to silence alternative voices, and treating voters who do not choose him first with contempt.

As Anglachel writes, there are several million of us who feel that Obama’s nomination is illegitimate, that his tactics are counter to our values as progressives, and that he is not the unity figure he claims to be. Indeed, Obama wears two masks: at one moment he gives high-minded speeches, at the next he is accusing Bill Clinton, a beloved former president, of racism.

As progressives, we are repulsed by the totalitarian nature of Obama’s candidacy — creating a cult of personality, the venom espoused by his adherents, the delegate stealing — tactics that are repugnant to the many who have spent a lifetime working for democracy and social justice.

Almost four years ago at DailyKos, DemFromCT wrote about Bush in ways which seem even more fitting for Obama today:

I was intrigued to hear some of the theories on the talking heads shows; it’s culture issues, not class economic issues. Kerry’s reality-based, Bush is not. Bush has run for four years to select and indoctrinate those who believe him and everyone else is against him.

During this primary season, Obama’s campaign used the big blogs as instruments to indoctrinate progressives and silence the opposition. Take the strike of DailyKos, for example. Imagine that this had happened at a progressive company: a group of women and men complain to management about rampant sexism and abuse. The manager, Kos in this case, regardless of his own agenda, would investigate and set limits on abusive language and behavior. Instead Kos, the proprietor of the biggest liberal blog, in a moment of unbelievable arrogance, calls their strike “laughable.” Feminism, justice, and respect are thrown out in favor of one candidate.

Politicalcenter continues:

The propaganda process was carefully managed turning everything damaging to Obama into racist or irrelevant issues. These included blatant refusals to print or to discuss clearly relevant issues to claims that any discussion was racism. Obama did not care about the truth. Only the message.

From this vantage point, Obama’s continual attacks on Hillary Clinton supporters were continually repeated through numerous MSM channels with little or no questioning and constant support for the Obama view of the truth. Obama thereby created the most one-sided message system ever developed in US politics.

The PUMA movement is the classic liberal fight against injustice. The ancestors to Just Say No Deal PUMAs are the abolitionists, the suffragettes, the labor movement, and the civil rights movement. We’re not bound to a particular party or a candidate. We’re joined together by our values. John Kennedy famously defined liberalism as:

not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man’s ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves.

Based on our progressive values, we reject Obama’s use of race-baiting and sexism as political tools — although ignored by the press and perpetuated by bloggers — we have documented it and are emboldened by these injustices:

Indeed, to this day, the Democrats have continued to use racism wherever they turn. From the Wright controversy, where Dean called the coverage racist, to the war against Geraldine Ferraro claiming that she is a racist, Obama has turned the tables dramatically against free speech and toward some other place that we dare not go or discuss.

Our movement faces ridicule and obstacles but is born out of our principles, and we will not be silenced. We believe that Obama’s defeat will strengthen the progressive cause long-term, we vote our conscience and we will not be bullied into supporting a candidate and movement who consistently violates the progressive tenets that include free thought and expression.

Riverdaughter perfectly expresses the progressive’s rational to reject to Obama. She writes:

Time is not going to heal this wound. Oh, I take that back. If I wake up on Nov. 5 to find that Barack Obama, the inexperienced, untested, unvetted, lightweight candidate who we counted on you to stop, if I find that he is NOT my president, I will finally be over it. If the man who called me a racist because I thought he was unready does not take the oath in January, I will be satisfied. If all the people he threw under the bus, the old, poor, working class, Appalachians, woman, latinos, asians, gay and Muslims find that the Democratic Party is now genuinely shocked and chastened for screwing us over as well as any Republican would have done, then we will have exercised our power.