Has The New Car Smell Worn Off?
By Anita Finlay ("Ani") on July 17, 2008 at 3:00 PM in 4th Amendment, Barack Obama, Current Affairs, David Axelrod, Democratic National Convention, Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, New Yorker
Do we really want to nominate a candidate we have to protect, or someone who is going to protect us?
With the collapse of IndyMac and Bear Stearns, mounting home foreclosures, a tanking economy and no end in sight in Iraq, we need someone far smarter and more knowledgeable than we are on matters of foreign and economic policy, national security, and our place in the global community. Someone who regards as sacrosanct the role of the President in upholding our Constitution. Someone who will stand up for what is right. FISA comes to mind. Senator Clinton kept her word and voted against giving telecommunications companies retroactive immunity while Senator Obama blithely reneged on his, throwing the 4th amendment under the bus.
As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously said “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Senator Obama’s campaign manager, David Axelrod, has done his level best to make you fear – not voting for his candidate. If you don’t vote for Obama, we will consider you a racist. If you don’t vote for him, they will overturn Roe v. Wade, they will nominate conservative Justices, they will keep us in Iraq for 100 years.
Most worrisome to me, however, is that whenever I speak to an Obama supporter, they can give me nothing to rest their hopes for change on. Their number one statement is: “He’ll surround himself with really great people.” This strikes me as code for ‘We are electing a symbol. We know he’s too inexperienced, but the old ‘pols’ will protect and help him.’ So perhaps their faith in his scintillating judgment is not as strong as they pretend.
Congressional approval is at an all time low. Nancy Pelosi, once elected Speaker, turned from a tiger into a pussycat, and with her pasty smile, said “impeachment is off the table.” Democrats have taken nary a bite out of Bush since they took back Congress, making their integrity suspect. Are these really the people you want whispering in Obama’s ear?
Now, apparently, we are not even allowed to poke fun at Senator Obama – so thin is his skin. Oh, let me not mention the word skin, lest that be taken the wrong way. What are his supporters so afraid of?
Do they secretly realize with all his policy flips flops, gross inexperience, and 20 years of nefarious, crooked and divisive associations that he is hanging on by a thin thread as it is?
This week, we saw more evidence of the thin-skinned Obama campaign.
The New Yorker cover featuring Barack and Michelle has everyone up in arms over the possibility that we are either offending or besmirching the chosen one. Regardless of whether one thinks this cartoon is great satire or misses the mark, if Senator Obama’s skin is that thin, what is he doing running for the highest and toughest office in the world?
Even the LA Times, and the NY Times’ otherwise inexcusable Maureen Dowd, both long on the Obama bandwagon, were making fun of the humorless Obama campaign.
What if Hillary Clinton had behaved this way, taking issue with every negative, smarmy or unfair depiction of her? She would never have had a moment to campaign, being too preoccupied fighting shadows. Only once did she come out swinging: when David Shuster of MSNBC piggishly asked if the Clintons were “pimping out their daughter Chelsea.”
Doesn’t it make anyone uncomfortable that Barack Obama has enjoyed political cover the likes of which have never been seen before? Hillary enjoyed no such advantage. In fact, it was exactly the opposite.
I don’t want to play tit for tat here. Honestly. But as disgusting as the disrespect and misogyny leveled at her was, and no matter how much her political rivals, aka, the “boys” piled on, no matter the Democratic Party elites stabbing her in the back for their own selfish gain – didn’t it make you feel better knowing that she could handle it?
She actually got taller and stronger the longer the campaign wore on.
The White House pressure cooker is a non-stop stress machine. The President has it coming from all sides, foreign and domestic, and must stand ready to take a pounding like the heavy bag at the gym. The honeymoon is over 20 minutes after the Inauguration, I can assure you. In fact, if the past couple of weeks are any indication, it looks like the bloom is already off the rose.
Are we really saying that Senator Obama does not have the intestinal fortitude to laugh off this magazine cover? That is preposterous. Or was this outrage merely feigned? Another tactic from the brain of Axelrod – get preoccupied about a cartoon, so that the damaging and/or unfavorable contents of the article itself would go largely ignored.
On Larry King Live, Senator Obama just commented The New Yorker cover was an insult to members of the Muslim community. Really? It seems the Muslim community was far more offended when two Muslim women, in traditional dress, were removed from sitting behind him at a photo op. Again, his comments are a diversion, more tactics of fear in order to protect and advantage himself. The only upset is the upset he is fomenting as another distraction from the real issue: him.
Watching how Senator Obama’s fans protect him and the party elites run political interference for him (remember Bush’s remarks at the Knesset), almost makes me feel like I’m at an Al-Anon meeting. We are not here to enable this man. He has to be ‘able’ without our help.
Do you really want to buy four years of this? How will you feel when your student loans keep you in indentured servitude and he has no plan to help but instead continues to be enamored of Reaganomics?
How will you feel when he keeps capitulating on the Constitutional protections this country is built on? How will you feel when women’s rights are further whittled away on Roe v. Wade because late term abortions should not be permitted when, as he so insensitively and cluelessly put it, a woman is “feeling blue”?
The fact that Hillary Clinton, out of the race for the past five weeks, is still polling better than Obama against John McCain should telescope something very significant here.
What will you do in the somewhat unlikely event that Senator Obama is elected? I promise, you will quickly tire of making excuses for him.
“Oh, he’s just running to the center.” The center of what? All his supposed political principles have been thrown out the window. Gun control, women’s rights, Iraq, FISA, the death penalty, NAFTA, and more.
Senator Clinton, as the true progressive in the bunch, evidenced once again with her FISA vote, would need to make no such adjustments. Whether or not you agreed with her on every point – her policy positions were straightforward from the beginning and she would require no waffling or fence-straddling now.
This is no time for a trainee. Fortunately, though the DNC would have you believe otherwise, this situation is not irreversible. There is a very clear path to the stronger candidate and if responsible Super Delegates have any courage, they will take it at the Convention.
Otherwise, please ask yourselves, how long can you protect someone who has shown he has no interest in protecting you?
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