Obama’s Big Problem And How We Can Inflate It
By Patrick Walker on June 8, 2008 at 1:01 PM in Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Huffington Post, John McCain
The next in our continuing series of the viewpoints of our many readers – SusanUnPC
For months, the punditry as a whole seemed to constantly say the same thing. There was no way the Republicans could win in 2008. The Republicans would merely offer up a token candidate, let the Democrats win and then regroup to contest for the Oval Office in 2012.
In the remainder of this piece, it is hoped to show how a vicious minority inside the Democratic Party, under the guise of “unity” and change, possibly derailed the “inevitable” Democratic victory in November. At the very end, the possible pitfalls Hillary supporters must think of before doing anything rash.
The idea that a 2008 Democratic win is predicated on various observations and speculations. The first was the apparent lack of enthusiasm that a large segment of the Republican Party has for their presumed nominee, John McCain. These evangelicals were such a reliable block of partisan Republican voters one could almost set a wristwatch by them and with that vote missing in November, it significantly reduces the Republican turnout.
Most in the GOP simply were simply going to keep their heads low and just let the storm pass them by. The economy is teetering, the party is seen as largely responsible for the ongoing quagmire in Iraq and eight years of an increasingly unpopular President makes victory almost impossible. How could Democrats lose?
Even with John McCain’s curious about-faces regarding the use of torture as well as his embrace of Bush tax cuts, his national popularity is seen by some as a political miracle even now. Every political hack in the blogosphere loved to label him as McSame and McBush, denigrating him, mocking his age and making rather inappropriate comments regarding his wife. Stubbornly, McCain’s popularity has simply held around the 45% mark at the national level for most of the winter and spring.
Into the Presidential race entered one Barack Obama. A largely unknown political candidate, with a resume so thin, Paris Hilton has more qualifications. Mr. Obama saw his chance to fulfill his Presidential ambitions so he has stretched his arm out to grasp the fruit. In order to become President, first he had to eliminate his only true opposition: Hillary Clinton.
All of dirty tricks and ridiculous accusations are too numerous to be mentioned here but the effects are profound. By skillful use of partisans to seize a beachhead in the caucus states and a pliant mass media ever watchful for an opportunity to smear Hillary, the Obama campaign had its start in Iowa. From that point on, their goal of expunging the Clintons became clearer and increasingly more strident. Even the history of the Clintons had to be forcibly forgotten.
The Obama campaign had used a string of small victories to inflate their story to use as a form of propaganda for the next stage. For example, how often does the typical Obama supporter ramble on about twelve straight victories? As often as they could but always omit that most of those states would be lost by him in the general election, making those victories pyrrhic by nature. By the end of the primary season, soon-to-be imprisoned Karl Rove even noted that Mr. Obama was limping across the finish line.
Still, these early victories over Hillary were the perfect sound bites to keep their ball rolling and as long as there was positive media spin on CNN and MSNBC it could hide what was going on inside the party as well what was happening on the Internet.
Here is where the plot thickens.
What happened next in the blogosphere world will go down in infamy. Suddenly, partisan attacks began against Clinton. In particular on various “progressive” blogs such as Huffington Post and Daily Kos, to name but two, supporters of Hillary began to witness extremely hostility. Originally, many just viewed this development as almost par for the course and some suspected that as Obama’s victories became fewer and fewer, his supporters became more adamant to make up for it. While I can’t prove this assertion, it makes many wonder if there is a great deal of insecurity in their belief in the viability of Obama. The internecine fighting between Carter and Kennedy in 1980 is relatively well-known and many simply assumed the Clinton-Obama rivalry would be more of the same.
Even before the whole Reverend Wright mess, the obvious misogyny was clearly evident, yet little was done by moderators of many of these sites; eventually, speculation about incompetence soon gave way to the idea that these sites were obviously sympathetic to the Obama campaign. Many comments had Obama supporters calling Hillary a bitch, a c-nt, or a Republican with many dittohead-like agreements to follow. The Huffington Post, for example, became one of those right-wingish echo chambers that they used to complain so fervently about. Though they did not realize it at the time, but their victory in the blogosphere was like all other Obama victories this year: pyrrhic.
As the Hillary campaign turned a corner and began winning, the calls for “the bitch” to simply drop out increased dramatically and those that supported Hillary by voting for her were obviously racist. No other explanation was tolerated. You could try and tell them facts like Puerto Rican voters were not racist because that was one of the few primaries Jesse Jackson won in 1988. No matter. Hillary voters were racists and that was that! Mr. Obama was black, the voters who didn’t vote for them were white. Ipso facto, people in West Virginia, Kentucky, rural Pennsylvania are totally racist and must be shamed into voting the correct way!
The other defining issue of this race was the problems of Michigan and Florida. While each side can argue their respective positions, by the time of the decision made at the end of May, the math of the whole thing was largely irrelevant. Instead of simply allowing the Michigan and Florida results to simply stand as-is and have all delegates be seated in Denver, with the issue of advanced primary dates and consequences being sent to a special committee to bring sanity to the rules themselves, the committee decided to insult everyone, mostly the Clinton supporters. That isn’t to say the Obama people haven’t been given the shaft, they just have not realized it… yet. They may have won the RBC battle, but again, that was a pyrrhic victory and seriously damaged party unity.
At the time of that final decision, Hillary had the popular vote, Mr. Obama had the pledged delegates and just allowing these elections to stand would have done NOTHING to the overall outcome. Neither would have gained enough pledged delegates to win outright and since they superdelegates were going to ignore the popular vote anyways that had little effect either. The end result of such a boneheaded decision were very unhappy Hillary supporters and significant portions of Michigan and Florida voters are unimpressed, to put it nicely. Obama managed to curtail Hillary’s numbers but in a big way, he cut off his own nose to spite his face.
Why did this article begin with Republican weakness, then onto the childish and juvenile behavior on Democratic web forums and finally to the rules committee debacle? Let’s ask a few other question first.
Is the weakness of the Republican party that deep? People assumed that the Republicans were discouraged by a sense of hopelessness for 2008. With the fracture of the Democratic party, what happens if this sense of hopelessness begins to fall away? With the word hope passing through Obama’s lips every eleven seconds, the only party that has hope now are the Republicans. Hope that the Democrats are fractured enough that their own vote will be suppressed and, better still, some of those Democratic votes go into Mr. McCain’s column.
For those Hillary supporters who have made loud pronouncements that they would vote for McCain to somehow support Hillary rethink their positions. If you truly wanted to help Hillary in 2012 you may not want to vote Republican.
It will be the most obvious way the Democrats will punish Mrs. Clinton with if she decides to run as a Democrat in the future. They could also use that as an excuse to try and pull a “Ned Lamont” to punish her for the actions of her supporters, if it hasn’t already been threatened behind closed doors.
There is another problem. What if McCain remains popular through 2012? Once he gets in there, it may be hard to get people to vote him out. Are you sure you want to put him in now? Just because Hillary supporters wish him to be a fine President, I have to say his drastic policy changes of the last few years seriously bring into question Mr. McCain’s sensibilities.
Quitting the party may be a foolish idea considering Hillary is a life-long Democrat despite what the Mr. Obama supporters try to intone. If you live in a state with a closed primary, you would be unable to support Hillary in the future.
Simply do not vote for Mr. Obama, or just vote for the Green Party candidate. Cynthia McKinney is black and she’s a woman. This way, the Mr. Obama propaganda corps will be unable to say that Mr. Obama lost because the Democrats became turncoats and voted Republican. They cannot then also claim her supporters are racists. Disgruntled Democrats simply voted for a third party as a protest vote.
If you want to do something now, when the DNC telemarketers call asking for contributions, tell them simply that the cheque is in the mail. Just don’t tell them you tore the check in half. Only mail half a cheque as a way to signal your disgust at the idea of a half vote. This is one of the more creative responses yet heard on this website.
If you can, donate directly to your local Democratic candidate or incumbent and ensure that they know you are deliberately cutting out Obama and the DNC itself. It is rumored that Mr. Obama has encouraged people to not contribute to other candidates and organizations. Mr. Obama hasn’t imposed a politburo and centralized control so take advantage of it right now before it is too late.
I have to be honest here and say I’m genuinely caught in a dilemma.
For one, the idea that the Republicans should profit from this infighting is problematic. The reason, after all, why each side is so fervent is to prevent a Republican victory after all.
On the other hand, I cannot stand the idea of someone like Obama winning with the tactics for which his campaign is obviously guilty of.
Mr. Obama’s legacy will not be defined in history as the first African-American ever to gain the nomination of a major American political party, nor that he outmaneuvered the great insurmountable Clinton political machine, but instead Mr. Obama will be remembered as the one who lost the 2008 election even as the stars themselves were aligned for a Democratic victory.
, the basis for the Best Motion Picture Nominee (Golden Globes) starring Brad Pitt.
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