MSNBC carried a blip of President Obama speaking in New York at a fundraiser. Sadly, the President is up to his old tricks. Remember when he was at a hoity-toity fundraiser in San Francisco and complained of Pennsylvania voters “clinging to God and guns”? That didn’t go over so well. Remember Gates-gate where Obama declared that “the police acted stupidly” before he knew all the facts?

Here, in the name of passing health care he says that “Democrats are an opinionated bunch” likely referring to the trouble he’s been having with the Blue Dogs. He said “y’all thinking for yourselves.” Then he says that Republicans basically “do what they’re told.” His robotic arm movements to make fun of “the other party” are really a sight to behold. When is a President supposed to make fun of American citizens — some of whom actually voted the man into office.

See for yourselves…

Interesting however, is that while he pretends to praise the fact that Democrats are “thinking for themselves” what he is really saying is that he wants Democrats to “do as they are told” as far as passing his fiasco of a health care proposal. Yet he belittles Republicans for “doing as they’re told.”

Which is it Mr. President?

When exactly would he like us to think for ourselves? I guess we already know the answer to that. The real problem is Republicans and quite a few in his own party are not following his instructions.

I don’t like bullies and I don’t care which party they belong to. It is grossly inappropriate for the President of the United States to belittle millions of people. This health care bill has never been adequately explained, nor is it formed. Yet in the midst of a disastrous economy, struggling citizens are asked to forego all good sense and follow the President and this Congress off a cliff without first asking any pertinent questions.

No one, regardless of party, whether an average citizen or a representative in Congress should be “doing as they are told.” What is required now is something we have all too little of — people thinking for themselves, getting all the facts and making a reasoned decision based on what is best for their families and for the country.

The President’s arrogance is staggering. And like the senseless feud he has started with FOX News, the one organization that refuses to pour the Kool-Aid, this is another example of behavior that lessens the gravitas of the office to which he was elected. As Hillary Clinton said during the primary last year, “You don’t need a President who looks down on you.”

I wonder if even those who voted for him are starting to feel this behavior is divisive and destructive.

Thoughts?

In my new video I look at the way the Emperor’s Clothing Syndrome has dominated the arts and humanities over the past half century, with the help of academic practitioners looking for theories to build on, trying to carve out some academic territory for themselves and becoming the high priests or priestesses of their chosen domains. In music, it ended with meaningless and very irritating noise.

Now I make some sweeping generalizations in this video, and may be overstating my case for effect, but that does not necessarily dilute the reality of what I am saying.

As I said at the beginning of the top ten composer series, we saw the Emperor’s Clothing Syndrome ( a tendency to pretend to see or believe something out of fear of being thought of out of step with others, or out of fear that you might be attacked or ridiculed if you show your true feelings) running rampant during the elections.

“It’s the kind of pseudo-liberal academic milieu that produces people like the Beast with No Name, who is a Rhodes scholar and yet one of the most narrow-minded and bigoted people you can find. One of the problems is that lot of people who excel academically are people who are able to absorb and reflect back what their tutors want them to,” I wrote then.

“They are the kind of people who try to impose their narrow and very theoretical world view on others and become blinkered in their focus, doing their best to beat down anyone who doesn’t agree with them. (Now what does that remind you of?).”

Academia can provide you with the tools and techniques of art, but the academic process cannot make you an artist, or even an art critic.

From a broader perspective, Academia can provide you with a framework for examining things, but to get close to the true nature of anything you have to examine it through a number of different frameworks from a number of different angles. If you keep using the same theoretical frameworks, they become blinkers.

Many branches of academia, particularly in the field of arts and humanities, strive to create a single framework or model of things and academics fight to have their models adopted as the only ones that are valid. That is what gives them power.

Art and life in general cannot be confined by academic theories or opinion. The essence of art is that it must be transcendant, and to be transcendant it has to be organic. It has to be able to grow beyond prescribed boundaries to achieve new perspectives.

As in art, so in life.

I have watched in horror and amazement as deeds, gaffes, falsehoods and gross errors in judgment that would have taken down any other politician just slide from Obama like Teflon, much like George Bush. Bush’s problem is not that he’s a Republican. It is that he is a petty, arrogant bully who thinks he is anointed by God, much like Barack Obama.

I believe Obama’s supporters are voting for a carefully crafted narrative; a symbol rather than a man. Symbols don’t govern. Men do. Women do. A symbol is nothing if there is no substance behind it. Here is my closing argument that he is “words, just words” and the substance of Barack Obama is as thin as tissue paper.

Campaign manager David Axelrod had to find a way to propel an affable but rather wishy-washy, under-achieving legislator from Illinois with only a couple of years in the Senate under his belt past a host of far more accomplished candidates. Therefore ‘experience’ became a dirty word.

With Senator Obama’s silvery speeches, his slick, evasive way around all direct questions and no policy decisions one could pin on him, he was able to move close to the front of the field. But he could not get past his biggest obstacle: the brilliant Joan of Arc in a pantsuit, Hillary Clinton. All eight guys sharing the debate stage piled on, including Obama, but still, she came out on top with her preparedness and smarts. So the narrative had to be amended. Not only is experience a dirty word, “Clinton” had to become a dirty word as well.

We were reminded of Republicans hunting Bill Clinton endlessly in the 90’s and told that we didn’t want to support political dynasties, i.e., Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton. Well, Hillary is Bill’s wife, so technically, she’s a Rodham. No dynasty there, but no matter. So first “experience” became a dirty word and “Clinton” became a dirty word, too.

After seven years of George Bush, Democrats, starved to retake the presidency, were sick and tired of partisan bickering and infighting. Whether people loved the Clintons or not, some were afraid that perhaps the Clinton name meant that the “hunt” would start all over again so they were willing to buy Axelrod’s first narrative in order to escape the second.

And then the third narrative was born: Barack Obama is post-racial, post-partisan and stands apart from inside-the-beltway politics. He will cut through the gristle and build consensus because he has no enemies and is not set in his ways like some old pol.

Axelrod then had to create a fourth narrative: Barack as rock star. He needed to draw the eye in order to bypass the Clintons’ rock star status within the Democratic Party and to distract the American public from the most important reason not to vote for him: he didn’t know what he was doing and had a paper-thin resume.

Hence we got the super-sized rallies, the soaring speeches, the ‘fainting,’ people screaming “I love you, Barack” from the throngs in the audience. We now know that many of his enormous rallies had freebie giveaways – rock concerts and the like. But that was a well kept secret, like the rest of this well-crafted stage farce. So the mystique of Obama was born.

The Democrats’ antipathy toward the Iraq war also helped to birth the fifth Obama narrative – Obama as the anti-war candidate, because of a speech he allegedly gave in the ultra liberal Hyde Park district of Illinois in 2002, at no political cost to himself. He was the man of “good judgment” for his war opposition. Not that he had the power to vote on any such a thing at the time. If he did, surely he would have found a way to do as he had always done in the State Senate when challenged by a politically risky vote: vote “present” as he did there 130 times.

But then, an all too compliant media started to get the collective tingle up their leg. Whether this was out of fear of being called racist if they didn’t ‘treat the black guy nicely’, or just their obsession with taking Hillary down or both, I don’t know. But they willfully decided not to do their jobs. He received no vetting whatsoever.

Still, Hillary Clinton had a formidable lead in the polls and was winning the majority of primaries before Super Tuesday (including Michigan and Florida), so he needed a new narrative to blunt her momentum and I’m sure everyone remembers what that was. It was born after Hillary’s unexpected win in New Hampshire and solidified with the South Carolina primary in January – ‘Bill Clinton is a racist and Hillary is insensitive to the plight of the African American community.’

When the campaign started, Obama was ‘bi-racial.’ That wasn’t working for him so well, so he became ‘African American.’ Another new narrative – is that number six? I am beginning to lose count.

Axelrod knew that Obama’s exotic background and dispassionate, professorial demeanor was not connecting well with the black community. Therefore, he had to drive a wedge between the Clintons and the AA community who were so fond of them. Professor Sean Wilentz published a brilliant article in the New Republic called “Race Man” detailing exactly how this was done. Again, the media played an important role here because they gave carte blanche to any nonsense that came out of Obama’s mouth, or that of his surrogates. This narrative of Hillary and her supporters as racist, low-information “Archie Bunkers” grew legs, although it had no basis in fact.

Even the clueless Senators John Kerry and the bloviating Joe Biden told us we had to vote for Obama because he is black. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it is just as racist to vote for someone based on the color of their skin as it is not to. So I guess narrative three (post-racial, post-partisan) was discarded.

Then, against the will of most of the mainstream media in March and April, word of Obama’s malignant associations started to bleed out: the now convicted criminal Tony Rezko, Reverend Wright, unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers and more. Another new narrative was born: the “I didn’t know” or the “it was boneheaded” narrative: a convenient way for Obama to avoid taking personal responsibility for any of his past actions or associations. Good judgment, you say?

Sometimes I think Senator Obama gets up in the morning, walks to the mirror, smiles at it and challenges himself to see how many dissembling statements he can make to the press without getting called on them. I think it must be a game to him, otherwise, how could he dare to be so cavalier with the truth before the American people.

I’m not going to detail his lies about these close associations, or his involvement with ACORN, nor am I going to detail his reneging on his important policy promises like FISA, NAFTA, Iraq, Israel, don’t ask don’t tell, women’s rights, gun control, Bush’s faith based initiatives and so on. All of these are egregious breaks in faith and trust not only with his supporters but with the entire party. Worse still were the press and DNC elite riding shotgun for him at every turn helping him to steal the Democratic nomination through caucus fraud, blocking re-votes and illegitimately being awarded delegates he did not actually earn. Let’s leave that aside for the moment, too.

To me, the worst break in faith was his reneging on public financing, for one very simple reason: his entire candidacy was built on the notion that the American people needed a new way of doing business in Washington. That lobbyists, special interest groups or billionaires cannot buy the Presidency.

So far, he has spent nearly a billion dollars trying to buy the Presidency.

Much of this money has come to him from questionable – and untraceable – donations on the internet. He just spent millions blanketing five networks with a thirty minute infomercial; this after spending six million for his faux-Greek column event at Invesco Field bullying all into submission at the Convention; this after his Barack-apolooza celebrity European Tour, trying to overwhelm the multitudes, foreign and domestic, into believing he is the President without him actually having done anything to earn the title.

He has said that he rejects lobbyists but the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac scandal have revealed that aside from his ardent supporter, Senator Chris Dodd, head of the Senate Banking Committee, Senator Obama has received more lobbying money from them than anyone. A new way of doing business?

Pollsters are cooking the numbers shamelessly in Obama’s favor. Until this last week, where we finally had the likes of CNN’s John King admitting to the ridiculously biased media coverage, it was a veritable love fest for Barack and a sandstorm for Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Had Obama kept his word to accept public financing, as John McCain did, and just campaigned on the issues, as McCain has worked to do – do you think Obama would still be in this contest at all?

These are his fighting tools: Experience is a dirty word. Clinton is a dirty word. I take lobbying money but I pretend I don’t and no one calls me on it. I change my tune daily on different networks and no one bothers to compare my false statements. I am not bi-racial, I am black. I insult the white grandmother who raised me by labeling her a “typical white person.” I insult people who don’t vote for me by calling them “bitter voters who cling to God and guns.” The Clintons and their supporters are racists. Everyone who says anything bad about me must be racist. If the press does not write glowing reports about me, I kick them off my plane, although they have paid good money to be there. “I didn’t know” (about Wright, Rezko, Ayers, Pfleger, my aunt living illegally and in squalor in Boston). Everything you find wrong with me or my campaign I either didn’t know about or it was ‘boneheaded.’

This is a new, cleaner way of doing business in Washington? What is cleaner about trying to overwhelm everyone else out of the race before the American people notice that your policies won’t hold water, and that you won’t hold any position long enough to stand against the changing wind. Obama promised hope and change. He, like George Bush, proclaimed himself a great ‘uniter,’ yet he has rapidly emerged as the most divisive figure in politics. How ironic that he, and the media, tried to paint Hillary as ‘divisive and polarizing’ when he and his supporters are responsible for more hateful vitriol than I have yet seen. Friends and couples are actually breaking up over supporting or not supporting this man.

His careless ‘let’s throw money at the problem’ attitude is horrid, particularly in such difficult economic times.

Obama and Biden deriding the “Joe the Plumbers” of this world belies not only their rhetoric but basic Democratic principles. Further it shows Obama to be an elitist, out of touch with the needs and concerns of average Americans. He postulates on “spreading the wealth around” from the safety of his Chicago mansion, and says it is “selfish” not to do so, while he and his wife, millionaires, give relatively little to charity, and his ‘favorite aunt’ in allowed to contribute $260 to his campaign yet lives illegally and in squalor in Boston. Oh, he “didn’t know.”

More do as I say, not as I do. That is the most damning and devastating part of his candidacy. It was always built on a lie built upon yet another bunch of lies.

How can anyone run on their “good judgment,” yet say “I didn’t know” to breaking revelations at every turn and be given a pass? How can we trust such a man ‘to know’ enough to take care of us when he doesn’t know enough to take care of himself or his own? Or willfully turns a blind eye to crooked and divisive behavior?

A grossly inexperienced, under-qualified man is poised to take the most difficult job in the world at one of the most challenging times in our recent history. And the entire narrative the svengali Axelrod and the media have crafted for him is built on nothing but smoke and mirrors. Hope and change indeed.

Contrary to his image, he is nothing more than an old style politician, an opportunist borne of the Chicago Daley machine, a man who has worked to buy the presidency and changes his policy positions as one would change their socks. After the Joe the Plumber debacle, the myth of Mr. Hope and Change has been debunked. What was initially appealing about his candidacy no longer exists. What is left?

I can find no good reason to vote for him.

I certainly hope the American people will come to the same conclusion this Tuesday.

From the original post:

Gatewaypundit has a video from Naked Emperor News with some comments from BO back in 1995. Yeah, it’s a few years ago. But he talks about the same thing he mentioned to “Joe the Plumber.” This sounds like the real BO to me – not the sanitized stump speech version. After all, there are no white people who willingly pay taxes for AA children to go to school, are there?

Here’s the audio:

All day yesterday, Memeorandum featured many, many articles about the second video, including one at the National Review.
Read the rest ->

First, the audio from 2001:

The National Review author provided a transcript of the audio and interspersed parts of it with interesting comments. I’m excerpting a few here, but it’s worth the time to read the entire article.

There is nothing vague or ambiguous about [Obama's comments]. Nothing. 

From the top: “…The Supreme Court never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical.”

If the second highlighted phrase had been there without the first, Obama’s defenders would have bent over backwards trying to spin the meaning of “political and economic justice.” We all know what political and economic justice means, because Barack Obama has already made it crystal clear a second earlier: It means redistribution of wealth. Not the creation of wealth and certainly not the creation of opportunity, but simply taking money from the successful and hard-working and distributing it to those whom the government decides “deserve” it. 

This redistribution of wealth, he states, “essentially is administrative and takes a lot of time.” It is an administrative task. Not suitable for the courts. More suitable for the chief executive.

Wow. “.. . redistribution of wealth. . . essentially is administrative.” Redistributing the wealth, then, is both a job for the President and is simply a matter for planning? And “not suitable for the courts” certainly suggests one would not have much chance for redress. Are you kidding?

Then he adds this:

Now that’s just garden-variety socialism, which apparently is not a big deal to may voters. So I would appeal to any American who claims to love the Constitution and to revere the Founding Fathers… I will not only appeal to you, I will beg you, as one American citizen to another, to consider this next statement with as much care as you can possibly bring to bear: “And uh, to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution — at least as it’s been interpreted, and [the] Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: [it] says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.

To me, when Obama says “[the Warren Court] didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution,” I get the distinct impression he means the court somehow failed in the “breaking free” part. That would mean Obama feels the constraints engineered by the Constitution should be removed or overcome somehow. This is what the NR had to say about that:

The entire purpose of the Constitution was to limit government. That limitation of powers is what has unlocked in America the vast human potential available in any population. 

Barack Obama sees that limiting of government not as a lynchpin but rather as a fatal flaw: “…One of the, I think, the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement was because the Civil Rights movement became so court-focused, uh, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that.”

So, the Civil Rights movement, by using the courts to address questions of equality missed out on creating “coalitions of power” that would bring about “redistributive change.” The reason the Civil Rights movement used the courts is because that is what the courts are for – to address such problems in a venue everyone believes has legitimacy and the force of government behind it. Why would community organizing have done any better? How in the world would “redistributive change” have occurred outside the courts? What does he MEAN?

In addition to the author’s comments about Obama’s statements, he notes as well that this video – by Naked Emperor News – was found and reported on by an individual. NOT THE MSM. The 1995 video is also from NEN.

I, do however, blame the press for allowing an individual citizen to do the work that they employ standing armies of so-called professionals for. I know they are capable of this kind of investigative journalism: It only took them a day or two to damage Sarah Palin with wild accusations about her baby’s paternity and less time than that to destroy a man who happened to be playing ball when the Messiah decided to roll up looking for a few more votes on the way to the inevitable coronation. 

We no longer have an independent, fair, investigative press. That is abundantly clear to everyone — even the press. It is just another of the facts that they refuse to report, because it does not suit them. 

Remember this, America: The press did not break this story. A single citizen, on the Internet did.

I just did a story on the MSM, noting that it had lost all its integrity. This is just another reason to distrust those providing you “news” on tv and print and radio. At least on the ‘net you can look at multiple sources and are not limited to whatever some editor decides to give air time to.

CBSnews did give some cursory coverage to the story by reporting on a remark by John Boehner.

“As disturbing as Barack Obama’s comments about ‘redistribution of wealth’ are, what’s worse is that seven years later his rhetoric is the same,” Boehner said Monday in a statement.

“Obama still wants to ‘redistribute’ our tax dollars and ‘spread the wealth around,’ giving money to people who don’t pay taxes rather than growing our economy for everybody.”

The Obama campaign immediately pushed back, arguing that the Right is deliberately misinterpreting a narrow legal argument Obama was making about decades-old court cases.
————–
“In this seven year old interview, Senator Obama did not say that the courts should get into the business of redistributing wealth at all.

The Obama campaign is whacking away at a straw man here. I don’t think Obama was arguing the courts should redistribute wealth at all either. He plainly said that was an administrative function for the chief executive.

Of course, this audio also has other implications. By discussing the redistribution of wealth and justice within the context of the civil rights movement, Obama also makes this a racial discussion. His context is clearly about AAs and whites.

Obama has said he is all about trans-racial politics even while his past associations with the likes of Rev. Wright, Father Pfleger and other race salary-men suggest otherwise. To me, this audio is simply more of the same in that sense.

And what about the redistribution of wealth and justice? Obviously Obama feels redistribution needs to happen. That’s not even open to question for him. He also seems to think the President can accomplish such redistribution because it is an “administrative function.” And he says the Constitution, rather than define what government cannot do to citizens, should rather define what it HAS to do for citizens. That’s a very different way of approaching the fundamental outlines of how our country works.

And, the Civil Rights movement missed out by ONLY using the courts to work for justice. ONLY? What venues did the Civil Rights movement miss?

Fundamental questions for a candidate, one would think. Will anyone but the bloggers bother to ask? Given that Obama has provided so little about his beliefs (other than his strong Christian beliefs, but NOT at Trinity, no, that was a 20 year fluke) or about him personally (writings, personal information), something like this audio offers a window into what a President Obama would put on his agenda. Had he bothered to make more information available, this audio might be placed within some bigger context. But he hasn’t. So, this audio is as important as it gets.

Obama is remarkably consistent from at least 1995 to 2001 in how he views the ideas of who owes what to whom. I wonder. In the wake of these audio clips, will people try to convince us BO’s politics have changed or his attitudes? Given that he was at Trinity until last spring, I’d say the only viable thing to say is his (mis)representaitons of his politics and his positions have changed. After all, the BO campaign will do whatever they can get away with, not what is true or even passes the sniff test.

If he’s a Democrat, I’ll pass. Thanks.

And since I registered as an Independent June 7th, the day Hillary suspended, as a protest to the ‘election selection’, I figure I am immune from the “Obama Collective.”

So there I was the other day, invited into a political debate via email, painstakingly composing all sorts of facts, figures and associations of Obama that would certainly give any reasonable person pause.

You know the litany: 130 present votes, 6 wrong votes, reneging on FISA, NAFTA, public financing, women’s rights, don’t ask don’t tell, Iraq, Israel. Bitter Gate. Sweetie Gate. I mention ACORN, the Fannie and Freddie scandal, caucus fraud, Ayers, Dohrn, Wright, Rezko Auchi, Pleger, Meeks, Pritzker, Khalidi, Al Mansour and the piece de resistance, picking the bloviating, endlessly gaffe prone – Joe Biden. Wow, what judgment, Barack!!!!

I send facts and figures together with, I must say, a rather cogent argument.

They counter with: McCain will croak in office within two months and Palin, spawn of the devil, will be President and ship us all back to the stone age.

I send more info. They reply with: lalalalalalalalalalalalalalala, but he’s a Democrat and we need change.

These are educated people. M’kay.

They tell me I am bitter than Hillary didn’t win. They tell me the people who are for McCain/Palin are from red states and are low-information voters. Oy vey!

I remind them that Howard Stern had an adorable little video out the other day interviewing NY Obama supporters who were very approving of the fact that Obama had selected Palin as his VP! Go listen for yourself. High information, indeed.

Boy, it must be nice to be a big city Dem and think you know every damned thing, huh? I sure found out from my 800+ GOTV phone calls for Hillary, speaking to plenty of red state voters of both parties, there are a lot of very interesting and well informed people out there.

So these big city slickers better get off their high horses and stop treating everybody else like “the fly-over people.”

To that end, one of our readers put up a wonderful comment in response to my story re Governor Palin’s great speech on behalf of women in Henderson, NV the other day.

To LJ, we thank you for a great post. Enjoy…

“Thank you No Quarter! It’s not easy being a young, female liberal-turned-conservative in New York City – your posts and your reader community keep me sane. I can’t wait to cast my vote for McCain/Palin ‘08!! I sincerely hope we use the momentum and inspiration of the 2008 campaign to better our country even after Election Day. Like Sarah said, “never again!” Do not forget how we’ve been duped by party politics and how our economy was wrecked by corrupt politicians and their social-engineering programs. We should scrutinize every politician who wants OUR vote the way we have scrutinized McCain and Obama…freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.

I’ve been rooting for McCain since the first debate, when he offered insightful, realizable solutions and showed the depth of his foreign policy experience. He inspired me to get out in my community and help where I can (by volunteering mostly). My boyfriend was also a Navy man and served this country. There is something these boys have – honor, respect for “the office, not the man”, love of country, love of service – they don’t complain, they do something about it. McCain may not be right 100% of the time as President (no one is), but from what I have seen, he will lead our country with courage and pragmatism.

As for Governor Palin, I was intrigued by her at first. I didn’t know anything about her so I didn’t pre-judge. I think her personal story is compelling (despite my fancy education, I have a lot of respect for people who worked their way up and are self-made). I think she has demonstrated experience running an executive office and negotiating with powerful interests, like the Alaska legislature and the oil companies. When you actually listen to her on the campaign trail and read the FULL versions of her interviews (not that travesty of an interview done by Charles Gibson in which half of what she said was cut out so she sounded incoherent), she is insightful and pragmatic on many issues. Faced with the Democratic choice of an inexperienced, machine party politician from Chicago, a run-at-the-mouth career politician, and the triple threat of a liberal supermajority in the WH, Congress and the Supreme Court…I am willing to give Sarah a chance.

However, my office has become inflicted with Palin Derangement Syndrome. Every day, they drag in “news” about her SAT scores, about how many colleges she went to, about her “prom queen hair”, about how she has no “family values” because her daughter is pregnant. It’s constant “Harvard good!,” “state school bad!” I don’t want to shatter their delusions and tell them Obama probably got into Harvard due to affirmative action policies and since he won’t release his scores, you don’t know how poorly or well he did (btw – these are the same affirmative action policies the New Yorkers grumble about because it keeps their prep-schooled, Kaplan-tutored kids from getting into their mommy or daddy’s alma mater. Hypocrisy stinks.)

It is sad that the so-called “educated” New Yorkers who pride themselves on how many degrees they have and how many museums they attend in a weekend can only resort to insults, ridicule and their own brand of fear-mongering (”She’s a redneck! She shoots moose! she believes in creationism!”). The women who hate Sarah because she is a conservative are the flag carriers of the “femi-nazi” movement. They think because she thinks differently, she has somehow betrayed women.

I consider myself a strong, independent women who can fight my own battles and I’ll wear heels and lipstick while doing it – thank you very much.

I appreciate the feminists who have made it possible for us to keep breaking the glass ceiling, but these “femi-nazis” would just as readily tear down any woman or man who doesn’t fall in line with their agenda. They don’t stand up and cry “foul” when those awful shirts about Sarah are worn. They don’t say boo about violence toward women when there is an artist in NYC who has erected a cardboard cutout of Sarah in a gallery and participants can take a SHOTGUN and SHOOT at the cutout.

I am not for stopping their right to act like fools and rabid dogs under the 1st Amendment, but maybe a public condemnation against this exhibit from a WOMEN’S ADVOCACY GROUP might be in order?! Doesn’t this de-sensitize violence against women?! The ACLU brings legal action against Christmas displays and the military’s flag-folding ceremonies…and this behavior doesn’t even get a stern frown or a letter from NOW??!!! They should be called NOW WHAT because they have no idea what to fight for anymore.

The funniest thing is, when I ask these “intellectuals” to debate me on the issues (since I actually KNOW what I am talking about and can give them a run for their money , they don’t bite. It’s easier for them to sit in the warm glow of PDS, feeling oh-so-smart about themselves. Palin Derangement Syndrome is the new Bush Derangement Syndrome.”

Excellent, LJ.

And let us not forget Clinton Derangement Syndrome. Lord knows, we suffered through that one lo these many months. Brave Hillary and her family suffered most of all. How tragic that Hillary opened the door for Sarah Palin to step through, when Hillary, more than anyone, deserved to step through it herself. Hopefully, some years from now, Hillary will.

If McPalin can surmount the Obama Collective’s Money Printing Machine and the MSM, otherwise known as Barack’s personal PR firm, Hillary’s daily flogging may indirectly be an aid to getting them elected. We are now hyper aware and ready to fight back. We will never again be caught off guard.

I am ashamed of men so lacking in self awareness they would vilify a woman, revealing their own insecurity with themselves. Likewise, I am ashamed of women using sexist attacks to degrade yet another woman, not caring that they both degrade and betray themselves, and all of us, in the process.

How gratifying to know that there are high-information voters out there, on both coasts and everywhere in between, who know better than to drink the kool-aid and can think very well for themselves.

More power to you all.

The Obama campaign has had a deliberate strategy of calling the Clinton campaign racist and the media has allowed itself to be led along. Obama himself confessed to this strategy in the Nevada debate when shown a copy of a campaign memo directing campaign workers to use race-bating to defame Hillary Clinton.

January 27, 2008:

Please, just fuck off. Bill Clinton made exactly the right point and Obama’s defenders are playing into the worst of the Right-wing racist tropes, that there is something tainted about successful black candidates who get majority black support.

January 28, 2008:

I’ve spent a good amount of time here on this blog defending HRC against bogus claims of racism, and I’ve smacked The Golden One around for engaging in his own race-baiting, trying to milk liberal white guilt for all it is worth.

There is no person, no campaign, no victory that can justify deliberate use of racial divisions. Leave it to the Republicans to immolate themselves on the pyre of racism come November.

February 2, 2008:

Then begins the long slog towards South Carolina, with the media, the blogosphere and Obama’s campaign screaming at every turn that the Clintons are racists.

March 31, 2008:

My point here is not to promote the Clintons (though I think they deserve it), but to emphasize the way in which they are demonized by their own party. They become the embodiment of the old South, the unrepentant, segregationist South, just as northern blue collar voters who challenge the party orthodoxy are labeled Archie Bunkers.

April 5, 2008:

Here is the challenge to the Democrats – how to cease treating working class whites the eternal “Other” of the party, the roadblock to fulfilling the promise of the nation, and seriously address the ways in which the party will help all Americans live their lives with dignity.

April 28, 2008:

I have seen it put cynically (hell, I have put it cynically myself) that Obama was just promising the (mostly white) comfortable class of the party that he wouldn’t insist on looking at those nasty claims of justice if they would just elect a black dude and redeem their souls.

May 2, 2008

The assault on the Clintons has no basis in policy or political philosophy. It is an attack on uppity white trash who dares to succeed in the world without assimilating into the ruling elite, and for the added insult of being adored by the nation precisely for their common connections.

May 4, 2008:

Hannah Arendt, my favorite political theorist, has been excoriated as a racist for pointing out that integration and post-racial sociality is not such a big deal when the person being integrated is already part of your socio-economic class, remains a numerical minority within your enclave, and is no threat to your social standing or economic power.

May 6, 2008:

Obama’s campaign is certainly doing pernicious race-baiting, but mostly to initimidate critics and shame wavering white voters.

May 8, 2008:

What I’m seeing is an amplified, exaggerated perversion of the lessons, biases and attitudes I encountered in my very liberal college education, things that resonate with me in strange ways, playing on the way I learned to see the world as divided into evil whites, good whites and the oppressed Others we good whites had to free from the evil whites.

May 18, 2008:

I don’t see the Hillary campaign saying a bad word about the voters, even those who vote for her opponents. I don’t see the campaign explaining away their losses because of some flaw or failing in the voters.

May 21, 2008:

Failure to create the conditions under which vast majority of the party will have no doubts that he will serve the interests of the party and be protective of those who dissent from him will leave not just Obama but the party itself in dire straits in the months to come. Riverdaughter has a brilliant post up on The Confluence. You need to go read it all beause it is good in every regard

May 23, 2008:

I’m reading the reports on the mendacious attacks the Bogger Boyz are making on Hillary by completely perverting her comments about RFK.

Rather than weigh in on the current idiocy (which is being handled very nicely by Riverdaughter & Co. over on the Confluence. If you have not read that blog, stop, go there, read and bookmark. I’ll be here when you’re done.)

May 31, 2008:

1. I am not saying in any way shape or form that Larry Johnson is lying about the existence of some video of Michelle Obama. Please. Larry would not do that. A video of some kind exists.

2. If you read his posts closely, Larry does not claim to have seen the video in question himself. I may have missed a post where he did state this, but in the posts I have read, he does not. He was very clear that he has spoken to at least two people who do not know each other, who he trusts completely, and who have attested to the existence of a video.

September 24, 2008:

When Democratic women say “The Obama camp has run a sexist, mysogynistic campaign,” we are told we’re wrong, no such thing, there was not any sexism there, except maybe some from Tweety. When Democratic women say, “No, it’s not his race, it’s his lack of commitment to the programs that matter to us,” we are told that, no, we’re all just racist bitches, and that it’s our fault if he doesn’t win.

September 16, 2008:

The ultimate shadow of Reagan is that you don’t win by defending losers, only by securing the interests of the winners. That is the dark heart beating in the chest of the Unity Democrats. They are done with the losers.

May 2, 2008:

It is the deep guilt of the liberal upper class that we know, every last miserable one of us, that our privilege is due to centuries of white supremacy and to the informal, unspoken, but pervasive advantage our skin color and behavioral patterns gives us in this society. It is our Moby Dick, the whale we pursue obsessively through political seas, frantic to have material proof that we are innocent of the crimes of our nation.

“We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people.” Snow asked: “Anybody making over $250,000…” Biden responded: “Is gonna pay more.” Snow: “Is going to pay more.” Biden: “You got it. It’s time to be patriotic, Kate. Time to jump in. Time to be part of the deal. Time to help get America out of the rut.”

Conservatives predictably went ballistic with their calls of “class warfare”; Obama’s fans thought it brilliant economics.

For those of us who are Democrats, or former Democrats, Joe Biden’s statement was offensive on a different level. Although many of us agree with progressive taxation, Biden’s formulation is deeply offensive. According to Biden, greater taxation equals greater patriotism. This concept fits perfectly with the self-congratulatory world of Whole Foods Nation. Anglachel describes Biden’s target audience as the new elites:

The focus of the [Obama] Democrats is on the winners of the economic realignment, those who managed to win a place in the white collar upper-middle class … [Obama] is the exemplar of a mode of life that, while not as unreachable as that of Bush’s base, is still out of reach of those who do not have the education, acculturation and business contacts to climb up that economic ladder.

Some will argue that Biden is simply practicing liberal class warfare; he is targeting the wealthy and not the “bitter” gun owners of greater Appalachia. I disagree. By using the framework of patriotism, Biden is challenging — to use Anglachel’s parlance — the “Bubbas” and the Archie Bunkers — to ownership of American patriotism.

Biden is telegraphing to Whole Foods Nation that it’s equally patriotic to live in Boulder, Colorado and pay on a 33% tax bracket income as it is to serve in Iraq, like Governor Palin’s son. Or, as a friend in this income bracket told me recently, she “sacrifices” by voting Democratic.

The primary campaign showed that Obama fared well with affluent voters and African Americans. Clinton crushed Obama with middle- and low-income voters. The Pennsylvania primary was a perfect example of Obama’s inability to connect with low-income voters:

The Pennsylvania Democratic primary shared many of the same vote characteristics of other primary states this season – with Clinton winning her core base of union members, less educated and lower income voters and rural voters, and Obama winning voters with more education and income, and black voters.

The attack on blue-collar voters by Obama is what precipitated the civil war now raging in the Democratic party, and Obama’s race-baiting of blue-collar whites has been one of the more depressing episodes in our history as a Party.

Low-income white Democrats are the least likely group to vote Republican, and the assault on this vulnerable group has all the markings of racial and class warfare used for electoral gain. African Americans are all too familiar with politicians playing on prejudices for electoral gain and there is nothing different in this case except for the color of the victims’ skin.

The dishwasher, the waitress at Denny’s, the auto mechanic, the grocery clerk, the nursing assistant, the soldier — all low income Americans — are equally patriotic to anyone living in San Francisco or Hyde Park or the East Village, regardless of the amount they pay in taxes.

I’ve been thinking about Biden’s notion of patriotism for several days. Last night I found a video which captures patriotism in a way still held by much of the country. It’s an old fashioned form of patriotism which is now considered uncouth and looked down upon by the liberal elites. But it’s a type of patriotism once honored by Democrats; it’s a part of what made Democrats the governing party for most of the first half of the last century.

The video is from Ken Burns’ brilliant 1990 documentary The Civil War. I think Sullivan Ballou’s love for his wife Sarah is only matched by his love of country.

Listen to Sullivan Ballou’s words carefully and think about everything he is sacrificing. You won’t hear politicians — except perhaps for John McCain — speak of our beloved country with such a degree selflessness and honor.

Sullivan Ballou wrote to his wife that he was “willing—perfectly willing—to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government.” Ballou’s patriotism is echoed by Sarah Palin’s willingness to give her child to the service of our country: “Today is the day that I send my first born, my son, my teenage son overseas…to fight for our country, for democracy for our freedoms.”

Whole Foods Nation hates Sarah Palin for the class she represents. She threatens the self-perception of their own moral superiority on race and their economic “sacrifices.” Giving her son to our nation is not enough to silence the voices of hate.

During the primary campaign, on TPM, billysumday suggested that Bill Clinton was a racist because of his bumpkin origins, totally ignoring that the President was educated at Georgetown, Yale, and Oxford:

Hillary broke Barack Obama’s magic wand, tis true. She took his mojo away. And now, Sarah is drinking his milkshake.

But Why? Why is this woman who came out of nowhere (just like Barack Obama did!) such a threat to The One, Barack Obama? I’ll give you a hint: this is not about Roe v Wade. Roe v Wade is going nowhere and we all know it. We are deaf to the same old threat the Democratic Party has literally used to keep us in line for decades–along with “Equal Rights,” “Equal Pay,” and other lies the party never really intended to correct succeeded in correcting once and for all. Nope. This isn’t about those things. Instead, this is is about regular people being sick and tired of elite asses like Barack Obama, who are out of touch with reality, running for President.

[SusanUnPC's Note: You've got to see the video at the end! Awesome!]

Up until this moment, Mr. Obama, you and the DNC used and insulted what a woman doesn’t have that you have, namely a paltry penis. So then, exactly what is it that she has that you don’t have, Barack?

Plenty!

Here’s your answer. Regular people see themselves in her. She’ just as smart as you are. More experienced than you are. She doesn’t have 300 advisors like you do, yet you look the fool.

What’s she got, you ask? She’s got “genuine”. She attracts regular people, who incidentally are the majority of this country. They see themselves in her. Finally! they are saying, A Middle American candidate!

No fanfare. No Temple.

No podium with a perfectly placed crowd. No insulting rap “music”. No perfectly timed chants.

No fake fainters.

No home made signs that aren’t really home made. No big shot attitude. No three thousand dollar suit.

No slowly tossing her haughty head back, chin in the air, eyes at half-mast toward the other gods, ear turned to the crowd, sucking in the Worship. (See left for how you look to others)

No sir. None of that. That’s YOUR way.

Instead, she is One of Them. One of those regular working people who don’t come from your elitist academic background. While you people sit at your desks with your noses in the air analyzing the Real World and what it needs, you don’t live in that world and never have. I spent enough time in your world before I entered the Real World to know the difference between theory and reality.

Who are these many many MANY people who relate to Sarah Palin instead of Barack Obama?

These are people who wouldn’t agree that hanging out with a domestic terrorist who wants to infiltrate America’s schools with Communist and Socialist ideas is an Okay thing to do—even if he did do it all 40 years ago. These are people who would not invite Bill Ayers to dinner.

These are people who struggle daily. The ones you ‘refer’ to all the time but can’t relate to. you can’t relate to them because you not only aren’t one of them, you never were one of them–in spite of your fictional novel that masquerades as an autobiography. When these people think, “Times are hard,” they aren’t thinking the way you and Michelle think. They aren’t thinking “Gee it’s getting rougher to come up with $20k for piano lessons for the kids“. And they didn’t, as Michelle suggested, buy some nice earrings with their tax stimulation rebate.

These are people who can smell bullshit four blocks away, Barack. They are people who make their own way in America because they know they Can. When they fall down, they get up. They don’t ask other people for freebees. Most of them rarely have time to go to a rock concert like the Democratic convention. Their kids might go though. That’s because when all your living bills are paid for you by somebody else, you have time to do the Hopey Changey act, because you aren’t living in the real world where you take responsibility for your own life. Yet. These are the people who pay for their kids’ education through struggling, sacrificing, savings from the money they have earned. and loans. These are the people who would rather swallow a broom than have the government take care of them. Some of them even hunt for their own food, prefering to gather for themselves than take food stamps for life. They would shovel shit for a living if they had to, something nobody recalls you ever doing. They give a whole lot more than they take and they don’t brag about it like you do.

These are people who would be horrified if they knew that Communists, Marxists, Leninists and Socialists in America are heavily re-energized and endorsing their candidate.

These are people would would be horrifed if they knew that their candidate received campaign contributions from Hamas. They understand that this is a threat to Democracy.

These are people who would never hang out with an Iraqi prison escapee. They would be shocked if their candidate’s career was overseen by a finally-convicted scumball who bilked taxpayers out of scores of millions of dollars with your help.

They wouldn’t ever attend a church where the pastor says, GODDAMN AMERIKKA, not even once much less for twenty years. They are people who revere American Democracy and do not want it to go away in deference to Middle Eastern jihad radicals. They revere Democracy wherever it resides as well, even outside of their country, because they are smart enough to comprehend that a threat to one democracy is a threat to all democracies. Israel comes to mind. So does Georgia. Some of these folks are a bit overly religious for my tastes, but what they don’t do is worship a human who acts like a god, namely they don’t worship You. Maybe they “Cling To God” because it beats clinging to other people’s wallets via the government, Barack.

Let me tell you more about who these people are. These are people who don’t need the likes of you telling them to heed a call to Service. They not only already understand what that means, but they didn’t heed The Call as a stepping stone to political advancement as you have done. They not only Serve, but many of them do it for Life. They are the people who take care of arrogant you daily. They are the people who grow that arugula you find at Whole Foods. They are the servants who know Service in a way you never have. They are the First Responders to disaster, while guys like you are still flapping your lips on TV. And they are the people who even go to war for their country without being forced.

These are people who don’t care at all what Chris Matthews or Keith Olbermann have to say. In fact, they support Sarah Palin even more when she is attacked by you and the Press. Why? Because they empathize. That’s why. They know what it is to be derided for making their own way. They know what it is to be snorted at by arrogant elitist Presidential candidates who aren’t going to do squat for them after their votes are cast. None of them ever got Affirmative Actioned into anything, much less Harvard. Yet, they are exponentially more loving toward America and Democracy than you and your wife are.

These are people who have never been to Daily Kos or Moveon’s websites. They don’t read Huffington Post. They are people who are not like You, Barack Obama. They are like Sarah Palin.

And they are in the majority in the USA, Barack.

Toss in all the millions of people, Democrats and Republicans, you have angered and horrifed by your shameful treatment of a superior woman so that your arrogant mediocre self could prevail. Then toss in all the people who voted for you in a primary before they figured out what you really are—-and you’ve got the reason why you are not The One any longer.

The facade has ended. We all know you are not The Emperor and you truly don’t have clothes. The overused Race Card is now a major annoyance instead of a guilt inducer. Your fake concern and lack of empathy and compassion in everything you say is so apparent that it’s raw, and your self-serving agenda is without excuse.

Take a look at The People, Barack. Compare some notes with your “rallies”. And understand why the Real World, the world of Democracy, rejects you handily. You can raise money from your dubious sources and not stop till Pigs Fly, pun intended, and it won’t attract one of these people.

Witness Spontaneity and a candidate who takes nothing for granted as you have. Maybe then you will Get It.

Copyright © 2008 Uppity Woman. All Rights Reserved.

Obama’s choice of Joe Biden, I suspect, will go down as one of worst political decisions in recent memory. John McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin will be remembered as one of the best.

Biden reinforces Obama’s worst traits: egoism, verbosity, elitism, and D.C.-insider status.

Palin, of course, reminds us of the best of McCain: fresh, unconventional, funny, and willing to battle the D.C. insiders.

Like John F. Kennedy, Obama was suppose to represent a new generation of leadership. But Biden is a dead weight on Obama; he entered the senate before much of Obama’s base was born.

Some argue that Biden, like Lyndon Johnson, brings gravitas to the ticket. Douglas Schoen is of this opinion. He writes:

Witness the single biggest decision that Obama has made thus far: choosing Joe Biden as his running mate. The pick helped squelch concerns about Obama’s perceived lack of experience and foreign policy savvy. More importantly, it signaled to moderates that when it matters, Obama makes sensible, pragmatic choices.

What Schoen fails to note is that this is a change election. Americans aren’t looking for the presidential candidate to supplement his credentials with a Washington insider, they are looking for attainable solutions for our economic woes and a smart exit strategy from Iraq.

Biden only emphasizes Obama’s weakness on foreign affairs, and he fails to bring Obama any electoral votes. Although it’s often stated that the Daley machine won the election for Kennedy in Illinois, it was actually Lyndon Johnson who guaranteed Texas for Kennedy and thus the election. Even if Kennedy lost Illinois, he would still have become president. Biden, unlike Johnson, doesn’t heal the Party’s divisions nor does he bring votes.

John F. Kennedy, in contrast to Obama, was not new to national service. Beginning as a lieutenant in the Navy during World War II and then by election to the Congress and Senate, Kennedy served his country for 17 years prior to running for president. Although Kennedy at 42 was younger than Obama’s 47, he was considered an expert on foreign affairs, authoring a book on pre-War England, traveling widely, and as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Kennedy offered himself as a fully-formed presidential candidate. Kennedy did not require Johnson’s résumé in order to sell himself to the country. Johnson signaled geographical and ideological balance, and a concession that Johnson was a real threat to Kennedy during the real balloting at the convention in Los Angeles. Kennedy finished with 806 delegates to Johnson’s 409, a far bigger spread that the Obama/Clinton contest.

What Johnson did for Kennedy was to unite two factious sides of the Democratic Party, the liberals and the southern Democrats. Obama’s failure to select Hillary as V.P. only increased the division in the Party, and it gave McCain an opening.

This opening has allowed McCain to completely dominate the narrative for nearly two weeks. Not all the conversation is positive, of course, but it doesn’t need to be; Obama’s message is being drowned out.

Although I ignore Dick Morris when he speaks about the Clintons, his Machiavellian view of politics is often worth listening to closely. Here’s Morris on Palin and women:

Anecdotal evidence already suggests that women may have a gut reaction to the establishment’s sexist assault on a woman candidate – and flock to McCain. They’ve seen him stake everything on this one big move of turning toward a woman – in direct contrast to Obama’s deliberate decision not to name a woman.

They’ve seen the media and Democrats gang up on her and do their worst. And they’ve seen Palin stand up and stuff the challenge right back down the establishment’s throat. All this may have created an entirely new dynamic in the race.

Recent polling data is confirming Morris’ prediction:

An ABC News-Washington Post survey showed white women have moved from backing Obama by 8 points to supporting McCain by 12 points, with majorities viewing Palin favorably and saying she boosts their faith in McCain’s decisions.

For many women, I believe, Obama-Biden represents the worst of the boys club and McCain-Palin have become the agents of change. The vicious attacks on Palin only reinforces this narrative. Valentine Bonnaire captures the revulsion many women feel towards the Obama-Biden-DNC sexist club:

We don’t like your ticket, BOYZ. And we’ll unpack why, now. To watch you SQUIRM. Your ticket represents every man who ever groped us, whoever abandoned us, whoever BROKE our fragile FEMALE HEART, whoever BEAT US UP, whoever hurt ONE OF OUR GIRLFRIENDS, OUR BEST FRIENDS — Oh, I could go on

Instead of making a peace offering to women by picking Hillary, Obama is now in the position of attacking another woman candidate. It’s starting to look like a pattern. The headline today from the Associated Press, written by Nedra Pickler, is “Obama puts heat on Palin as she boosts GOP ticket.” She writes:

Obama said last week’s Republican National Convention did a good job of highlighting Palin’s biography — “Mother, governor, moose shooter. That’s cool,” he said. But he said Palin really is just another Republican politician, one who is stretching the truth about her record.

“When John McCain gets up there with Sarah Palin and says, `We’re for change,’ … what are they talking about?” Obama said Monday. (emphasis added)

Obama’s use of the pedestrian “cool” is meant to assure us that he is unfazed by Palin, but his need to sound unconcerned makes the desperation almost palpable. Obama is now running against Palin. He doesn’t have a choice. Obama is hemorrhaging women voters. He must stop the bleeding, but his attacks on her only serve to diminish him. Palin has become Obama’s opponent, and his attacks on her inexperience only remind voters of his own inexperience and, even worse, they remind women of what he and his supporters did to Hillary. The attacks on Palin, a woman friend told me today, are beginning to feel like personal attacks on all women.

Instead of having two political giants like Kennedy and Johnson, we have three candidates for vice president, of which Palin is the best, and McCain is reaping the benefit.

Their behavior during the campaign was so far from being progressive that I’ve concluded that they’re not actually progressives — at least not of the New Deal, progressive government heritage. Indeed, Markos proclaims himself a libertarian Democrat, meaning he’s well-off and politically correct.

Regarding the Silence of the Bloggers while the media performed a misogynistic bloodletting on Hillary, Big Tent Democrat writes:

[Digby] KNOWS why [media bias] was not covered by most of the Left bogs until the ABC debate – for the same reason the Media’s bias, sexism and misogyny was not covered by the blogs – because they loved it when it was against Hillary Clinton. The Left blogs failed in the primaries and it is time they owned up to it and why – when it was smears, sexism and silliness against Clinton, all was well. Look at Keith Olbermann for crissakes. Their complaints about McCain favoritism in the Media, to the extent it exists, now rings hollow. Their credibility had been shot long ago.

Now Digby is endorsing attacks on McCain. Does she want to go after his tax policies? How about Iraq? Is it his abortion stance? No, it’s not about policy. Here’s the plan she endorses:

Why not concentrate on character critiques that have some real grounding in reality? Just to give a few examples:

*
McCain is old and gets confused occasionally.
*

McCain is running an ugly, smear-based campaign.
*

McCain has a legendarily short fuse.
*

McCain is annoyingly self-righteous.
*

McCain’s straight talk has evaporated in the face of his need to win evangelical votes.

How to go after McCain and promote a progressive agenda? Ageism. He’s running a “smear-based campaign” (read: he’s racist). Nice coming from a group that allowed (and participated in) Obama’s race-baiting of the Clintons. And please don’t call McCain “annoyingly self-righteous,” while Obama lectures Americans to learn Spanish — a language he does not speak.

The “progressive” bloggers’ desire for power — not a progressive agenda — has turned them into modern day Bolsheviks. There is nothing progressive about race-baiting, sexism, and ageism. The sooner Obama is defeated and these cranks fade away, the better.

PUMAs need to start formulating a vision for a post-Obama Democratic Party, one which I hope is focused on providing opportunities for all Americans regardless of race, sex, or age.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWXqpHEsrxc[/youtube]

I was struck by the high quality of the ad. It tweaks Obama’s celebrity status, and then unleashes a full-throttle class attack on Obama. “Life in the spotlight must be grand,” intones a woman’s voice, dropping her voice off for emphasis, “but for the rest of us times are tough. Obama voted to raise taxes on people making just $42,000.”

Contrast this ad with the lingering image of Obama in Europe, a trip which I think cost him dearly. Obama is trying to stretch his image into that of a statesman; he tried to fill the shoes of real presidents by going on the Euro-Disney tour of historic moments of American presidential history. But these staged events actually make Obama seem smaller, like the scared guy hiding behind a faux presidential seal:

I’ve been thinking about Obama’s missteps since he “secured” the nomination. I think Obama would have been wise to go somewhere he lost big, like West Virginia, leaving behind his entourage and asking working people about their concerns in the streets and cafes of small town America. Instead of puffing himself up to look presidential, Obama should bring himself to the door steps of poor whites in Appalachia, Latinos in Texas, the elderly in Florida. Bill Clinton published a book during the 1992 campaign called “Putting People First,” and his economic message struck a chord. Obama has promised Hope, but he has failed to articulate a compelling economic message. But I suspect that he and his advisers are already intoxicated on their perceived greatness.

Obama’s message is a post-modern, self-referential echo of how great Obama is, because Obama brings you hope and that’s what you’ve been waiting for, in addition to yourself (who you didn’t know you were waiting for). He won’t let you be complacent and he will remind you that you and he are merging into “The Ones we’ve all been waiting for”. And then a light will shine. Our tires will spontaneously inflate. And the earth will begin to heal.

Putting sarcasm aside, take a look at a Bill Clinton ad from 1992. People often complain that politics is all image and no substance. But here we have a candidate who is nearly all substance. He is working at his desk while the names of economists supporting his economic plan scroll across the screen. Obama fills the screen with himself and his adoring crowds, Bill Clinton (like Hillary Clinton) outlined solutions. Working Americans, I suggest, can see the difference.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gny-7ZBsJ9w[/youtube]

My neighbor told me today that he’s voting for McCain. The only other time he’s voted Republican was for Nixon in 1972, an ominous warning for Democrats.

If Obama is losing Democrats like my neighbor — white ethnic, life-long Democrat, over 65 years old — he is in deep trouble. Back in April, Anglachel wrote that Obama’s inability to speak the language of the working class would cost the Democrats the election:

Should Obama be the nominee, he can kiss the general election goodbye … the Democratic Party leadership itself is going to be paying for its whole-hearted embrace of reductionist class politics. Some voters will defect to the Republicans, though I think that is going to be limited … I think you see a significant section of the working class simply turn away from participation, depressing turn out and costing the party electoral success. They will stay away until the party offers them candidates who talk to their material interests instead of to the leadership’s fantasy of being modern day Solons.

Obama’s inability to speak to the “forgotten middle class,” as Bill Clinton famously called them, is a primary source of his troubles. His campaign is still running to win the votes of college towns, but now great swaths of working America are starting to pay attention and the candidate speaking to the concerns of the working class, ironically enough, is the Republican nominee.

But this movement has a twist: Obama lacks legitimacy. The continuation of this rift is not about Hillary “losing.” Clintonistas, like myself, know that losing elections and having your heart broken is the inevitable risk of politics. Anglachel writes:

With John Edwards in the news these days, I have been reflecting on the theme of “Two Americas” and have applied a twist that more accurately reflects the two Americas within the Democratic Party – those whose bigotry and biases are excused because they are of the right class and those whose flaws are inexcusable, even when the flaws do not exist.

This “class” split in the Democratic Party is much more than an economic split. As Anglachel suggests, it is evidence of a values divide. These values are not the black-and-white split of abortion. Instead, this divide is a matter of emphasis. Obama talks about access to health care, but he doesn’t offer a universal plan. Obama criticized Hillary for her Iraq War vote, but he wasn’t in the senate to vote. Obama lectures Americans to learn Spanish–an irony not missed by many– a language he doesn’t speak.

But the differences of emphasis were not themselves the deal-breaker. The deal-breaker, I believe, was about Obama’s tactics in the campaign and the Democratic Party’s complete bias and vote-rigging for their chosen candidate. Donna Brazile’s embarrassing performance at the RBC was so transparent in its bias that she became the most visible Obama shill massaging rules for her candidate, all the while lecturing us on rules. Do they really think we’re that stupid?

Clintonistas, and now PUMAs, are revolted by four major issues. This is by no means an all-inclusive list, but includes the followings:

(1) The Democratic Nomination was Stolen

garyinchapelhill writes about Obama’s lack of legitimacy resulting from a stolen nomination:

Obama’s decision to return full voting status to delegates from Michigan and Florida does not make up for the fact that the RBC stole delegates from the uncommitted voters, as well as all write in votes, AND 4 of Hillary’s delegates. Until that travesty is corrected the votes of those delegates can not be considered legitimate.

And Marc Rubin of The Denver Group considers Obama’s current flip flop on Florida and Michigan as a ploy to entice disgusted Democrats into the fold:

Florida and Michigan were one of the earliest examples of how dishonest, two faced underhanded and fraudulent Obama can be, when he claimed in speeches that he stood for “voices being heard” and “every vote must count”, and then clamped his hand over the mouths of almost 3 million voters in Florida and Michigan because he didn’t like what those voices were saying, which was a loud “go home”. And in all likelihood are still saying “go home and will continue to say it. Clinton beat him by landslide numbers in both states and this little act of political self preservation isn’t going to fool anyone. Anyone, even an Obama supporter can see it’s nothing more than another cynical political ploy to try and win back voters who were disgusted with him a long time ago because he needs them now.

(2) Obama Race-Baited the Clintons

Obama’s race speech was compared to Lincoln by his sycophants in the media. It was closer to Nixon’s infamous “Checkers” speech, a disingenuous, hateful piece of sophistry created to dove-tail with white liberal guilt. The conflation of Jeremiah Wright’s homicidal racism with Geraldine Ferraro’s simple observation was only the most glaring evidence of Obama’s tactics. Anglachel points out that Obama’s demonizing of low income whites was a basic political calculation:

working class voters are not the socio-economic slice of the “white” vote that votes Republican. They are the least likely portion of white voters to do so, which is part of what made the constant slamming of this group so infuriating during the primaries. This was the slice of the white demographic most likely to vote for Hillary, and that was the reason they were being singled out for shaming and insults.

And Alegre puts her finger on why PUMAs find Obama unacceptable:

I think I can speak for millions of Hillary’s 18 millions supporters when I say that Camp Obama stepped over a serious line when they tarred the Clintons as racists in the lead-up to the SC primary (and since). Those attacks were simply unforgivable and may be a big reason (among many!) why many of us won’t get on that unity pony of Howie’s.

(3) Obama Attacked Hillary from the Right

Attacking Hillary from the Right was not by itself a deal-breaker. But the fact that Obama went after Hillary on health care — after everything she had fought for in the 1990s — was a disgraceful appropriation of Right Wing tactics and talking points. As SusanUnPC writes:

The sad reality, of course, is that Obama has no fealty to commitments over issues. Issues are merely fodder to be used to grab what he seeks above all else: Victory…Now, every politician has to be focused on winning. But most politicians have some issues about which they genuinely care and are knowledgeable about. Obama doesn’t seem to hold any issues dear.

(4) The Democratic Party Rejects Racism, Embraces Sexism

Democratic Party leaders and Obama supporters stayed silent while egregious misogyny was leveled against Mrs. Clinton. As feminist blogger Violet Socks said to me, the silence from our “brothers” on the Left regarding this sexism has been one of the most disappointing political events in the annals of progressivism. So we must have an accounting, and a defeat. There are worse things than losing elections, and I believe we have just witnessed them during the primaries. Obama’s use of sexist stereotypes against Hillary gave cultural permission for the venom against Hillary. It was outside the realm of acceptable behavior for a Democratic politician, and must be vehemently rejected. Voting for Obama is condoning tactics which are anathema to why we are Democrats in the first place.

Lynette Long writes:

I am not Lolita. I will not crawl back into bed with a party that raped me. I will not stay in an abusive relationship because I have nowhere else to go. I will not be placated by a pat on the head or a worthless trinket. I will not spend the rest of my life waiting for tomorrow or listening to people tell me that today is better than yesterday.

Defeat is Good

Just as Barry Goldwater’s defeat by Johnson in 1964 was considered the end of the conservative movement, Obama’s victory is seen by the neo-liberals as a rejection of third-way progressivism. However, the PUMA movement is not an end but a beginning. It’s not the continuation of Bill Clinton’s moderate policies, but a movement of dedicated progressives who embraced Mrs. Clinton’s far more bold agenda, an agenda more analogues to FDR than Bill Clinton, and one which is much more progressive than Obama’s. Our nascent movement parallels the rise of the conservative movement:

All the pundits saw the size of Goldwater’s defeat. Almost none grasped the implications of the fact that the Goldwater campaign had twice as many volunteers as Johnson’s — or that while 66,000 people donated to the Kennedy and Nixon campaigns of 1960, over a million gave to Barry Goldwater in 1964. Among other things [it is an] account of how a rebellious and at first marginal political faction moved toward power reminds us of the dynamic character of politics and the dangers of static analysis

I am a Democrat because I believe in universal health care, because I despise racism, race-baiting, and sexism, and because I believe in the democratic process. On all these counts, our Party has failed us. We must rid our Party of race-baiting, sexism, and vote stealing, and return our Party to its glorious heritage of patriotism, equal opportunity, and care for the most vulnerable.

Thanks to Medusa for her help with this essay.

“You interlace your hands in a circle, the interlacing being a symbol of different types of people coming together and the circle a symbol of unity,” he says. Their design, . . . is free, and Husong is urging people to download it and print it on posters and T-shirts. “We want to see it everywhere, but more importantly we want this sign to take the world by storm.”

Now that the secret hand-sign has been revealed, Obama supporters will be able to recognize each other at a distance. Of course, so will the rest of us.

Read the rest ->

2) MSNBC is reporting that Bill Clinton will be offered the Wednesday night speaking slot right before the VP candidate speech. What does this mean? I have no idea but the author seems to think that means Clinton will introduce his wife as the VP candidate. Yeah, right.

3) An interesting bit from the National Review talks about affirmative action. Mentioning Obma peripherally, the writer talks about having served on CSU hiring committees. The interesting part is not what affirmative action was designed to do and the merits of that idea, but how it plays out when hiring.

We had a variety of recent immigrants from the Caribbean as professors and students, almost all from affluent families. One can imagine the problems of others supposedly with 3/4, 1/2, 1/8 black or Hispanic ancestry. What qualifies as a minority, and who ascertains it in the post-Ward Churchill era? Many of our white students with parents from the Oklahoma diaspora rightly claimed American-Indian heritage, albeit in the 1/16th to 1/8th range. The Asian problem was even weirder — 3rd-generation affluent Japanese, no? But the Hmong immigrant of 10 years, yes? The recent Taiwanese arrival, no? More likely, there were de facto Asian quotas — given the ability of such minorities in many fields to outperform almost everyone else and thereby become “overrepresented” in the UC system.

Bumper-sticker identification was unfortunate. The half-Hispanic student with Wilson as his surname never could obtain the authenticity that his counterpart with a Hispanic father received. Accented and hyphenated names, and renaming, were common, in addition to occasional ethnic dress.

Interesting and confusing. Particularly for a big-tent Democratic party.

4) There’s an interesting campaign analysis at realclearpolitics. The author suggests the McCain campaign has realized this election really IS all about Obama and has taken to skewering him as humorless and “fussy.”

Yes, the [Britney] ad was silly but this is what political observers fondly call the silly season – that time in August when everyone is looking for a bit of light relief. Obama’s allies overplayed their hand by claiming Celebrity was racist and it will be many years before Bob Herbert of the New York Times lives down his fantasy about the phallic symbols therein.

For once, Obama seems a little rattled. He even accused McCain of lying about his energy plan for the relatively mild offense of trying to reduce it to an off-hand remark about tire inflation. He was clearly irked by the mildly amusing stunt of distributing Obama tire gauges. “We weren’t lying, we were mocking him,” said one McCain aide. “He’s so fussy.”

The aide added that he had a theory that the campaign that laughed the most tended to win. There could be something in that. Suddenly, after coming across as unremittingly dour during the primaries, McCain is enjoying himself a lot more, quipping about his wife Cindy taking part in a topless beauty pageant and telling people to lighten up about Celebrity. By comparison, Obama is straight faced.

McCain’s The One ad, which painted Obama as a would-be messiah, complete with Charlton Heston as Moses parting the Red Sea, also hit home. The suggestion that Obama sees himself as too grand to relate to the concerns of ordinary people has real potential to damage him.

Makes me want to look at those ads again.

5) Peggy Noonan, a former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan now at the WSJ, has a piece describing the “political landscape” right now. Like many pundits, she describes the “known knowns” of unexpectedly tight polls, a European tour without much “bounce” and the McCain campaign “catching on” to the idea of Obama as shallow celebrity.

She goes on to say all the preening by Obama is strategy rather than vanity. It is all part of a plan to make voters comfortable with Obama wearing the trappings of the President. But, the campaign makes mistakes.

However. Mr. Obama consistently shows that he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. It’s a theme with his talented, confident staff. They don’t know what they don’t know either. Because they’re young and they’ve never been in power and it takes time to know what you don’t know. The presidential-type seal with OBAMA on it, the sometimes over-the-top rhetoric about healing the earth and parting the seas. They pick the biggest, showiest venue for the Berlin speech, the Brandenburg Gate, just like a president, not realizing people would think: Ya gotta earn that one, kid. Going to Europe was fine, but they should have gone in modestly, with a modest venue, quietly spread word that his speech was open to the public, and then left the watching world awed by the hordes that showed up. For they would have. “We couldn’t help it, they love him!” It would have looked as if Europe was coming to him, and let that sink in back home.

She ends with this:

Is Mr. Obama’s self-conception in line with his gifts, depth, wisdom and character? That’s the big question, I suspect, on a number of minds.

As for Mr. McCain, I think he had the best moment of the month this week at the big motorcycle convention in Sturgis, S.D., when he was greeted with that mighty roar. And his great line: “As you may know, not long ago a couple hundred thousand Berliners made a lot of noise for my opponent. I’ll take the roar of 50,000 Harleys any day.” Oh, that was good.

There’s a thing that’s out there and it’s big, and latent, and somehow always taken into account and always ignored, and political professionals always assume they understand it. It has been called many things the past 50 years, “the silent center,” “the silent majority,” “the coalition,” “the base.” The idea of it has evolved as its composition has evolved, but the fact that it’s big, and relatively silent, and somehow always latent, maintains. And watching that McCain event—vroom vroom—one got the sense it is perhaps beginning to pay attention to the campaign. I see it as the old America, and if and when it reasserts itself, the campaign will shift indeed, and in ways you can even see from 10,000 feet.

I hadn’t heard about the Harleys. She is right. That is good.

6) Also at the National Review is this piece about HRC speaking in Denver.

The writer notes that HRC is scheduled to speak on Tuesday – Women’s Equality Day. He also notes there is still some skirmishing about whether Hillary’s name will be placed in nomination and that Hillary herself said:

I know that there have been a lot of questions on this subject. Senator Obama and I share the goal of ensuring that the voices of everyone who participated in this historic process are respected. I want to assure everyone we are working together with Senator Obama’s campaign and the DNC, and I am confident we will have a successful and unified Convention in Denver.

The the author says:

Nothing in there to tell you anything one way or another.  But look at it this way: Hillary Clinton speaks to the convention on Women’s Equality Day, amid a big celebration of the role of women in the Democratic Party, and everyone is feeling good about how inclusive they are — and then, just hours after celebrating the right of women to vote, the convention denies a vote to the millions of women who supported Hillary Clinton?  How’s that gonna work?  Might it be that the fortuitous occasion of Women’s Equality Day will actually create pressure for a floor vote?

Hmmmmm. Hope so!

7) The WaPO has an article today about the Democratic convention. Nothing really new here, but it doesn’t start well:

With the clock running out on preparations for the Democratic convention, advisers to Sen. Barack Obama are scrambling to reach a compromise with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to appease her supporters and find roles for her and her husband.

The Obama and Clinton camps said this week that they agree on a central point: They would like to avoid an embarrassing display of discord from Clinton’s most ardent backers when the national convention begins in just over two weeks. Conversations about how to achieve that have increasingly focused on the question of whether Clinton’s name will be offered in a roll-call vote by delegates to determine the nominee, even though she has said she is not challenging Obama’s claim as the party’s standard-bearer.

Appease? “Appease” does not imply “take seriously” or “listen to” or “talk with.” “Appease” means throwing a bone.

Still, some Clinton supporters and delegates are mobilizing to attempt to force a symbolic vote, or at least draw as much attention to the Clinton team as possible during the Denver events. Michele Thomas, 40, a photographer in Los Angeles, said she is helping organize delegates who think that only through a roll call can Clinton be properly honored.

“If the party is speaking about unity, they [the Clinton delegates] believe the only way to unify the party is actually allowing them to vote,” Thomas said in a phone interview yesterday. “Moving beyond the convention, if they were not allowed to vote there would be a lot of resentment.”

Lastly, there is this ironic bit:

The back and forth with Clinton — as well as questions about whether her husband will actively campaign for Obama after the convention — threatens to distract attention from what Obama’s backers hope will be one of the convention’s central themes: change. Planners are hoping to create an event that looks and feels different from past conventions, with more interactive components and an emphasis on the grass roots, in order to mirror the core message of Obama’s candidacy.

“Emphasis on the grass roots.” Heh. What grass roots would those be? How about all the nascent and established grass roots movements like PUMA? Yeah, there’s the rub.

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 [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP-YoB5mnZs[/youtube]

Casting a critical glance at Michelle Obama’s abortive attempt to woo women voters at the Palmer House this week in Chicago, Marin explains why Michelle’s bankrupt entreaties will fall on deaf ears.  I quote Marin:

The Obama campaign has a woman problem. How big? How small? It’s not clear, but in a close election, small can be big.

Marin, in other words, acknowledges the schism in the Democratic Party, a schism, she correctly observes, that is a result of the disenchantment of a core constituency: women.  Refer to them as small all you want, Democrats, but small is large in a competitive general election.  And yes, size matters.

Marin continues:

You wouldn’t have known it from this mostly well-dressed, mostly well-heeled crowd. Many of the women, black and white, young and old, were early donors who gave money back when Barack Obama was a long shot, and they were gladly giving again now. A lovely lunch of organic chicken prepared by a renowned chef, Alice Waters, brought in somewhere between $400,000 and $700,000 for the Obama Victory fund. 

Although visually diverse, the crowd of women attending the Women for Obama event are all wealthy; they are members of the haute bourgeoisie.  This is in stark contrast to the many female Democrats the media has relegated to the penumbra.  Marin, on the other hand, places one of these ignored women in the center of her column.  I quote:

But the women Obama needs right now are the ones who do not dine downtown. They’re the ones who can’t afford organic anything, forced to choose between a gallon of gas and a gallon of milk because they can’t buy both on the same day.

Women like Sarah.

 

A few hours after leaving the “Women for Obama” luncheon, I ran into Sarah, not her real name. I’ve known her for a few years. A single mom, she free-lances, working as many jobs as she can to support two growing boys. She dreams of a permanent gig with benefits, but it’s still just a dream.

A 37-year-old Democrat, she is also a college grad and a news junkie who has watched this campaign like a hawk. She surprised me with her anger Tuesday, saying she’s voting for McCain.

To Sarah, Barack Obama is like the organic chicken at lunch. Sleek, elegant, beautifully prepared. Too cool.

At last a reporter highlights what everyone else suppresses.  Obama is an elitist, Marin declares, and he must choose a different tack if he desires the support of women who have had to struggle their entire lives to receive an education and to raise their children.  These women are the survivors of sexism, and they empathize with Hillary Clinton and all the other experienced women who have been forced to wait as the polished, groomed boy of little to no accomplishment is arbitrarily catapulted to the rung above her on the social and financial ladder.  ”Too cool” is an apt characterization of Barack Obama: he is nothing more than a newfangled commodity, and the insidious glow that emanates from the burnished surface of this patriarchal blandishment does nothing more than contribute to the chilly environment too many working women have had to endure both inside and outside the sexist workplace.

Women whose dreams have been crushed continue to suffer, but Michelle and the donors with whom she cavorts nibble on organic chicken as they celebrate the destruction of Hillary Clinton.  Because Marin understands this is not a winning strategy, she offers the Obamas a bit of advice.  I quote Marin again:

They may need to try offering more macaroni and cheese.

In other words, the hopelessly aloof, indeed oblivious, Obamas must acknowledge the uncomfortable reality of their irrecoverable loss of the votes and the confidence of working women.  Perhaps Michelle should ask the WAL-MART distributor to whose Board she was appointed if they have any boxes of macaroni and cheese mix to spare the family that spends $10,000 per annum on ballet lessons and summer camp.  Perhaps it is time for the inhabitants of the Rezko mansion to learn how real Americans experience quotidian life.  Perhaps Michelle Obama would understand working women if she spent less time at fashion shows with her husband’s slum landlord patron and more time with the ordinary women Carol Marin interviews.

If only reporters were as thorough and rigorous as Carol Marin of the Chicago Sun-Times. 

The reception of Marin’s article can be reviewed at Memeorandum. 

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I stopped reading Maureen Dowd and the rest of the New York Times’ misogynists during the primaries. Like many of Hillary’s supporters, I could not stomach their CDS hatefest,  and their Kool Aid keggers just added insult to injury. However, now that Himself is the presumptuous Democratic nominee, Ms Dowd has taken to noticing some of the problems of his candidacy. In a recent Op-Ed, Dowd writes:

When I interviewed Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for Rolling Stone a couple years ago, I wondered what Barack Obama would mean for them.“It seems like a President Obama would be harder to make fun of than these guys,” I said.“Are you kidding me?” Stewart scoffed. Then he and Colbert both said at the same time: “His dad was a goat-herder!”When I noted that Obama, in his memoir, had revealed that he had done some pot, booze and “maybe a little blow,” the two comedians began riffing about the dapper senator’s familiarity with drug slang.Colbert: Wow, that’s a very street way of putting it. ‘A little blow.’Stewart: A little bit of the white rabbit.Colbert: ‘Yeah, I packed a cocktail straw of cocaine and had a prostitute blow it in my ear, but that is all I did. High-fivin.’ ’   

During the primary, when I went looking for editorial cartoons on Barack Obama,  I read on Daryl Cagle’s cartoon site that because cartoonists couldn’t draw him well, there were few cartoons of Obama. I wondered then if that statement was a dodge because cartoonists didn’t want to be accused of racism when they caricatured Obama’s African American features. It has been abundantly clear that  cartoonists have absolutely no problem finding ways to caricature Senator Clinton. The Cagle cartoonists now appear to be comfortable caricaturing Obama, as can be seen above.  About the difficulty to find humor with Obama, Bill Carter writes: 

When Mr. Stewart on “The Daily Show” recently tried to joke about Mr. Obama changing his position on campaign financing, for instance, he met with such obvious resistance from the audience, he said, “You know, you’re allowed to laugh at him.” Mr. Stewart said in a telephone interview on Monday, “People have a tendency to react as far as their ideology allows them.”.Noting that the senator seems to emphasize the historic nature of his quest, Mr. Stewart said, “So far, our take is that he’s positioning himself to be on a coin.”   

Making fun of politician has been a staple of democracy since its founding. Political satire, invective humor and dramatic irony began in Athens with the founding of democracy and remains essential to the democratic process of vetting, critiquing and exposing through humor. Aristophanes made good use of it in Athens and we continue to reap the benefits from the freedom to laugh at our leaders. In his comedy, the Knights, Aristophanes writes about an Athenian leader: 

You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.   

Remarkably, Dowd appears to understand that by being off-limits to humor, Obama, who is mostly unknown anyway, is becoming a tight little knot of impenetrable actions, defended vociferously by his surrogates. She writes:

Certainly, as the potential first black president, and as a contender with tender experience, Obama must feel under strain to be serious. But he does not want the “take” on him to become that he’s so tightly wrapped, overcalculated and circumspect that he can’t even allow anyone to make jokes about him, and that his supporters are so evangelical and eager for a champion to rescue America that their response to any razzing is a sanctimonious: Don’t mess with our messiah!If Obama keeps being stingy with his quips and smiles, and if the dominant perception of him is that you can’t make jokes about him, it might infect his campaign with an airless quality. His humorlessness could spark humor.    

Americans make fun of their politicians. In fact, all free people do. Hillary joined Amy Poehler in caricaturing herself on Saturday Night Live and people loved it.  If out of political correctness or sanctimony, a politician is not laughing along with people, then the jokes are whispered and become less, not more, acceptable. If Obama doesn’t begin to laugh with people, he will become the laughingstock of people. In fact, that is already happening to the arugula candidate, as Dowd states: 

He’s already in danger of seeming too prissy about food — a perception heightened when The Wall Street Journal reported that the planners for Obama’s convention have hired the first-ever Director of Greening, the environmental activist Andrea Robinson. She in turn hired an Official Carbon Adviser to “measure the greenhouse-gas emissions of every placard, every plane trip, every appetizer prepared and every coffee cup tossed.”The “lean ‘n’ green” catering guidelines, The Journal said, bar fried food and instruct that, “on the theory that nutritious food is more vibrant, each meal should include ‘at least three of the following colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple, and white.’ (Garnishes don’t count.) At least 70% of the ingredients should be organic or grown locally, to minimize emissions from fuel during transportation.”Bring it on, Ozone Democrats! Because if Obama gets elected and there is nothing funny about him, it won’t be the economy that’s depressed. It will be the rest of us.