“Backtrack Obama”

I propose a new name for the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party: Backtrack Obama.

I have no idea what I am going to do this fall but I do know that Obama is a complete and unadulterated fraud. He is NONE of the superior things he held himself out to be in Iowa and is no more than a run-of-the-mill political hack. Perhaps e.e cummings was right and we will ALWAYS have to settle for politicians defined as “arses upon which everything has sat except a man.” Perhaps McCain is a bigger arse than Obama, but he not a bigger fraud.

There was no reason for Obama to run for the presidency other than his enormous ego. The Democrats had a qualified and deep field before he entered it. Obama was the least qualified based on experience alone to be nominated. Yet he chose to divide the Democratic Party along ideological, racial, generational and gender lines. The Party will pay for this in the years–if not decades–to come.

Obama has trashed the proudest parts of Bill Clinton’s legacy. Clinton practiced what he preached: Opportunity, Responsibility and Community. Clinton’s approach benefited virtually ALL Americans. I always found it informative that virtually no black leader criticized Clinton’s welfare reforms and I have felt that they did not do so because his economic policies help lift twenty million people out of poverty. Yet Obama openly criticized Clinton’s welfare reforms in 1996 and 1997 when it really mattered and has said on several occasions that Ronald Reagan was a more transformational president.

In fact, the Obama campaign has pointed to the racist elements within the CLINTONS’ careers in politics. Obama is like the kid that killed his parents and then pleaded for sympathy because he is an orphan. If Chicago machine politics and Reagan worship are what we can expect from an Obama administration, I want no part of it.

By the way, check out my story of Obama’s rise within the Daley machine.

Now Obama is running ads that claim his efforts on behalf of welfare reform cut the rolls by eighty percent. THAT is the politics of hype. Obama is not only opposing budgetary measures that do not add up, he now OPENLY says that even starting to balance the budget is the least of his worries. And since he trapped himself in the debates with Hillary regarding a social security tax hike, he now has to promise that no one who makes less than $250,000 per year will have their taxes increased if he is elected president.

The new taxes he has proposed so far on those who make over $250,000 come nowhere near meeting his new spending initiatives (especially if he “revises” his plans for troop withdrawals from Iraq–which he will) and do virtually NOTHING to address the need for social security and medicare funding.

In the area of foreign policy, Obama once again painted himself into a corner out of which he cannot escape during his debates with Hillary by saying that he would meet unconditionally with the leaders of even the most rogue states at their bidding. Whether this is what he meant to say is irrelevant now that he has had to expend so much time and energy “manly standing” behind his original foolish formulation of his new kind of foreign policy.

And it not just his support of FISA that has exposed Obama for the fickle politician he is. He abandoned the ONE part of the public financing of campaigns that has actually worked, now supports almost unlimited gun ownership rights, thinks convicted rapists should be subject to the death penalty and believes women who are “just feeling blue” should not be allowed to have late term abortions. Obama is giving the concept of triangulation a very, very bad name.

After Hillary withdrew from the race, Obama’s national lead should have soared to at least a double-digit one. At this point his favorability ratings are about equal to McCain’s. After Obama is exposed for the inexperienced fraud that he is, this will looked upon as the high water mark with respect to his popularity. Obama is about to find out how tens of millions of dollars of advertising works AGAINST the carefully crafted (and false) image his campaign created for him. Obama spent over $15 million on television ads in Iowa prior to the caucuses. It fooled about 75,000 people into supporting him. Hundreds of millions spent by the Republicans on negative ads against him will do much more harm than anything Obama can do to counteract them–especially if the best he can come up with are ads like “Dignity” that lie about his past stands on welfare reform.

If, (as I think he will) Obama loses the general election, he will have cost the Democratic Party not only its best opportunity to win back all three branches of government in a long time, he will have tarnished the Democratic brand as much as Bush has marred the Republican brand. In fact, this election should have been about the policies of Bush. Instead, it will be about Obama’s qualifications and character–or lack thereof.

I have never been more disillusioned about politics than I have become this year. What happened to Hillary was a tragedy of epic proportions. But disillusionment is mostly a good thing (i.e., we become disabused of our illusions) and one of my most fervent hopes is that Hillary Shrugged will lead to a third political party that needs neither the Christian Right or the knee-jerk left. THAT would be change I could believe in.