A03517
Articles : GovernmentThe Insurgency of Barack Obama
Editor’s Note: There has been a lot of discussion on GNN recently about whether Barack Obama’s candidacy poses a real threat to the political establishment. Of course, he has won the hearts and minds of the grass roots liberal and progressive communities, but can a person who has advisers like former national security advisors Zbigniew Brzezinski and Anthony Lake, former assistant Secretary of State Susan Rice, and former Navy secretary Richard Danzig really be that much of a revolutionary? In this excerpt from his book, Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing, Stephen Marshall reminds us that the threat isn’t necessarily the candidate, but the flow of political reformist insurgents they bring into the party apparatus.
“The two-party system was never anything, just two political factions fighting over jobs, money, influence and power. We have only one political party, the Party of Property, which has two right wings: Republican and Democrat, and that’s it. There are no great differences.”
Many of you will be familiar with this verbiage, long has it been the mantra of the great American novelist and political commentator, Gore Vidal. This is the way he put it to me during our interview just a year after George Bush began his second term in the White House.
Vidal’s indictment of the American political system does not exist in a vacuum of conspiratorial anti-establishmentarianism. In fact, it is exactly because of the way that Democrats and Republicans have ganged up on third party candidates that “bipartidism,” the academic term used to describe a two-party system, has evolved into a pejorative.
The bipartidism critique focuses on the control of the two-party system by a myth in which Democrats are supposedly the party of the people, while Republicans are the agents of establishment power. The parties, critics assert, use hot button or wedge issues like abortion or health care reform to compartmentalize the political discourse, while ultimately supporting economic policies that favor their true constituents, the wealthy and corporate elites in the country. Writing in his book Contours of Descent, economist Robert Pollin noted dryly, “the general requirement of product differentiation in an electoral market entails that, at the margin, any Democratic president will offer more social concessions than a Republican of the same cohort. But we should be careful not to make too much of such differences in the public stance of these two figures, as against the outcomes that prevail during their terms of office.” Pollin’s book targets the supposed ’90s “boom” under Bill Clinton, explaining that, even while Clinton was seen as a friend of the poor, his policies actually did more to harm average workers whose wages stagnated as they faced more job insecurity than under his Republican predecessor, Bush Sr. So, the theory goes, while modern day political leaders trade off their party’s conservative or liberal legacy to keep voters entranced, in reality, as country music legend Waylon Jennings once said, “There ain’t a dime’s worth of difference between them.”
That wouldn’t have surprised American historian and political economist Walter Karp, who analyzed a century of collusive political scheming in his hard-to-find volume Indispensable Enemies. Karp’s book exposes a political system run at both state and federal levels by “party bosses” whose sole mission is to maintain control of their party organization. With their power and wealth dependent on the measure of influence these bosses exert on their parties, Karp explains “every elected official is a potential menace.” Thus, American political history can be viewed through a radically different lens, especially in those instances when, as Karp alleges, bosses have purposely lost elections in order to protect themselves from internal threats in the form of “insurgent” candidates. Citing examples that span from the late 1800s right through to the early 1970s, Karp argues that once reformist candidates win office, they often turn their attention to the corrupt party machine itself.
With the support of the electorate, there is nothing to stop them from “attempting to oust local party leaders, from bringing new men into the party ranks, from passing reforms that weaken the party organization, from winning public support so strong that the organization cannot deny him renomination… There are times, therefore, when losing an election becomes an absolute necessity.”
Extrapolating these Machiavellian tactics to the broader state and national political scenes, where Republicans and Democrats portray themselves as ideological enemies, Karp is no less thorough in his deconstruction. Looking back over seventy years of political action, he points to the fact that in most states the relative power — ie. minority or majority status — of each party had remained virtually unchanged. How can this be, he asks, if the sole purpose of each party organization is presumably to do all they can to win elections? Can the party organizations in their respective districts simply fail that consistently to field winning candidates without a major overhaul? According to Karp, it’s common sense. For party bosses whose real concern is not winning, but maintaining power, it is far more important to strike alliances with their supposed opposition so that they can collaborate in maintaining and protecting each other’s base of power.
Karp uses the failed insurgency of Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy to illustrate this dynamic. After the assassination of Robert Kennedy, the Democratic Party bosses had a problem. McCarthy stepped into the campaign and channeled the energy of the Kennedy delegates into his own reformist campaign. Young students and hippies traveled across the country, cutting their hair and going door-to-door for their candidate under the slogan “Get clean for Gene.” Worried about the destabilizing influx of new party activists, Karp contends, the bosses decided to push “party hack” Senator George McGovern, who would put forward his own reformist agenda to splinter McCarthy’s rank and file. Then, using their power at the party convention to engineer the Democratic presidential nomination for Hubert Humphrey, despite the fact he had not won a single primary, the bosses threw the election to stem the tide of reformist idealism that was sweeping through the party. As Karp explains, a victory “could only make genuine insurgency more promising to many and encourage yet more newcomers to enter active politics. On the other hand, a defeat… would strengthen the party oligarchy considerably. Newcomers to active politics would be crushed with disappointment, branded as losers and quickly returned to private life.”
Beyond their mutual need to protect each other’s control of the party organization, the party bosses must ensure that the economic support base—namely, their wealthy and corporate donors, many of whom spread their charity to both parties—is not harmed by a reformist candidate. Karp even goes as far as saying that since the authority for policing elections and operating election machinery is left to the state parties—who are assumed to be rivals—the opportunity for colluding in vote fraud, in the case of an upstart victory, is very real.
Of course, many of America’s best-loved presidents have campaigned and won on a tide of populist hope. But Karp spills a good flow of ink to show how programs like FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society were powerful rhetorical vehicles that, upon reaching Congress, were subjected to a scheme of self-sabotage in which one wing of the victorious party — the obstructionists — would play the role of bad cop to the reformist wing’s good cop, thus shutting down much of the original value of the platform.
While much of Karp’s analysis involves specific examples of skullduggery and planned outcomes of various state and federal campaigns, he also posits a larger, more far-reaching assertion about the intent of these collusive political tactics. Karp was an anthropologist and, in applying a macro lens to the phenomenon he was exposing, discovered that, in order to protect its power, the fundamental mission of the party machine was “to eliminate the political condition that breeds independent ambition.” In other words, to engineer in the electorate a sense of apathy or, as he puts it, a “gratitude for small favors and a deep general sense of the futility of politics.” While this claim is the most difficult to prove, it is interesting to note that around the same time that Karp was writing Indispensable Enemies, Harvard intellectual and foreign policy analyst Samuel Huntington generated a report for the Trilateral Commission which warned that the rise in radical consciousness and civil unrest during the 1960s would have long- term effects on the governability of American society. More, he warned, it had endangered the establishment authority, which was “based on hierarchy, expertise and wealth.” Aptly titled The Crisis of Democracy, Huntington’s report reminded its readers that “the effective operation of a democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy and noninvolvement on the part of some individuals and groups.”
We don’t need to look much farther than the statistics on American voter turnout to see that, whether inculcated by elites or from a widespread sense of boredom, political apathy has always been a fact of nature in U.S. politics. Addressing the media one week before the 2004 presidential election, Curtis Gans, the director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, told reporters that Americans are “now 139th out of 172 democracies in the world in our level of voter turnout…” In fact, the highly contentious 2000 election inspired a turnout of approximately 106 million people, representing 54 percent of the eligible voters. Comparing the turnout of voters to that of the sixties era, he cited a long list of factors including “a lower level of trust in our leadership than perhaps at any time” in American history. Yet, while professing a general sense of pessimism about the future of voting patterns, he did predict that the 2004 election would yield a marked surge in people 30 and under. As it turned out, he was right.
Posted by silverback
Co-founder of GNN. Music video and feature film director. Co-author of "True Lies." Director/shooter of "BattleGround." Arrested at the RNC shooting first narrative feature "This Revolution." New projects: A book, "Wolves in Sheep's Clothing: The New Liberal Menace...
RELATED ITEMS
- ClintoBama
Posted by Szamko on Monday, February 11th 2008 - Lessing: Obama will be assassinated
Posted by silverback on Sunday, February 10th 2008 - Why Obama never had a chance...
Posted by mkane on Tuesday, January 29th 2008 - The dirt on Obama
Posted by sunspider on Thursday, February 7th 2008 - Barack Obama vs. Huey P. Newton
Posted by mickeyz on Monday, February 12th 2007 - Black America's real issue with Barack Obama
Posted by silverback on Wednesday, February 14th 2007 - The Great Desensitizing Machine
Posted by jwijn on Monday, January 3rd 2005
“Threat to the establishment” – long term, or short term?
I have no illusions that Obama will lower the defense budget, open the CIA to transparency, or call for multilateral enforcement of the Geneva Conventions.
But he may be open to an official apology for slavery. He may be able to stand in front of a crowd of Native Americans and define sovereignty. He may be able to convince Muslims that the USA is not trying to destroy Islam. Just words, I know, but a little hope can go a long way.
I am not hoping for a President that will make our changes for us. I am hoping for a President that will steer us closer to the path that needs to be taken. We are too far from that path right now – the only way to get there from here is through rivers of blood.
500,000 dead infants (due to sanctions) is sounding good?
This election season I decided to re-read HST’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72. I’d recommend that anyone who hasn’t read it check it out; Thompson did a good job of exposing some of the ‘old-guard’ party boss tactics that this article talks about. (In ’72, “party hack” George McGovern ended up winning the nomination over several representatives of the Democratic party elite – who got their revenge by crossing party lines to support Nixon in the presidential race).
The Democrats’ Class War
by David SirotaFor all the hype about generational and gender wars in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, we have a class war on our hands. . . .
In most states, polls show Hillary Clinton is beating Barack Obama among voters making $50,000 a year or less — many of whom say the economy is their top concern. . . .
Obama has let Clinton characterize the 1990s as a nirvana, rather than a time that sowed the seeds of our current troubles. He barely criticizes the Clinton administration for championing job-killing trade agreements. He does not question that same administration’s role in deregulating the financial industry and thereby intensifying today’s boom-bust catastrophes. And he rarely points out what McClatchy Newspapers reported this week: that Clinton spent most of her career at a law firm “where she represented big companies and served on corporate boards,” including Wal-Mart’s.
. . .“If Obama started talking like John Edwards and tapped into working-class, blue-collar proletarian rage, suddenly all of those white voters who are viewing him within the lens of transcendence would start seeing him differently,” says Charles Ellison of the University of Denver’s Center for African American Policy.
Continue Reading . . .
Here’s my take on what catalyzed the almost-revolution of the 60’s: an invite from a popular president to “ask what you can do for your country”. JFK didn’t run for office saying he would support integration, he didn’t have radical ideas about fixing this or that, he simply told the populace to lead and that he would support us. Similarly, Bobby didn’t start off being opposed to the Vietnam War (what the Vietnamese call “The American War”).
Obama is not presenting us with a lot of “specifics” about what he can do for us, he is talking about what we can do together. Let’s let Obama get out in front, and then run right over him, cause my sense is that he’ll happily join us! Up the revolution!
Sounds better than 1,000,000.
For the record:
“Senator Clinton, who has served only one full term (6yrs.), and another year campaigning, has managed to author and pass into law, (20) twenty pieces of legislation in her first six years.
These bills can be found on the website of the Library of Congress (www.thomas.loc.gov), but to save you trouble, I’ll post them here for you.
1. Establish the Kate Mullany National Historic Site.
2. Support the goals and ideals of Better Hearing and Speech Month.
3. Recognize the Ellis Island Medal of Hon
4. Name courthouse after Thurgood Marshall.
5. Name courthouse after James L. Watson.
6. Name post office after Jonn A. O’Shea.
7. Designate Aug. 7, 2003, as National Purple Heart Recognition Day.
8. Support the goals and ideals of National Purple Heart Recognition Day.
9. Honor the life and legacy of Alexander Hamilton on the bicentennial of his death.
10. Congratulate the Syracuse Univ. Orange Men’s Lacrosse Team on winning the championship.
11. Congratulate the Le Moyne College Dolphins Men’s Lacrosse Team on winning the championship.
12. Establish the 225th Anniversary of the American Revolution Commemorative Program.
13. Name post office after Sergeant Riayan A. Tejeda.
14. Honor Shirley Chisholm for her service to the nation and express condolences on her death.
15. Honor John J. Downing, Brian Fahey, and Harry Ford, firefighters who lost their lives on duty.
Only five of Clinton’s bills are more substantive:
16. Extend period of unemployment assistance to victims of 9/11.
17. Pay for city projects in response to 9/11
18. Assist landmine victims in other countries.
19. Assist family caregivers in accessing affordable respite care.
20. Designate part of the National Forest System in Puerto Rico as protected in the wilderness preservation system.
There you have it–the facts straight from the Senate Record.
Now, I would post those of Obama’s, but the list is too substantive, so I’ll mainly categorize.
During the first (8) eight years of his elected service he sponsored over 820 bills. He introduced:
233 regarding healthcare reform,
125 on poverty and public assistance,
112 crime fighting bills,
97 economic bills,
60 human rights and anti-discrimination bills,
21 ethics reform bills,
15 gun control,
6 veterans affairs and many others.
His first year in the U.S. Senate, he authored 152 bills and co-sponsored another 427. These inculded:
**the Coburn-Obama Government Transparency Act of 2006 (became law), **The Lugar-Obama Nuclear Non-proliferation and Conventional Weapons Threat Reduction Act, (became law), **The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act, passed the Senate, **The 2007 Government Ethics Bill, (became law), **The Protection Against Excessive Executive Compensation Bill, (In committee), and many more.”
It’s a brilliant analysis.
As per Obama, it could be worse. For me, it’s come down to getting someone in the White House who isn’t a certifiable psychopath. Someone, anyone! I don’t know if Obama is or isn’t, which makes him a far better choice than Hitlary or “Son of Cain”!
Chickenma, that’s crazy. Where did you get that info?? Senators can (and do) propose bills?to congratulate a local sports team?!?
Unfortunately, I think they do….
I got it from the comments at http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/02/michelle-obama.html
I don’t know if abcnews would have vetted it, probably not. I will research this further.
“Here’s”: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery Hillary’s record, still searching for Obama’s.
That thomas.loc.gov site is very interesting. In fairness, the above is just what she sponsored that passed, neither one of them have passed much of what they’ve proposed. Anyway, scroll down for each and see what you think – his record looks better for the U.S. Senate than hers, and I don’t know how to find his Illinois record, though I remember seeing something about Instant Runoff Voting that he sponsored.
While I do prefer Obama to Hillary, I don’t like a lot of his record; pro-PATRIOT Act, supports increasing the size of the military, anti-Second Ammendment rights, bizarre comments about Pakistan etc.
Still, he’s a saint by comparison
Here is Clinton and Obama’s record on environmental voting and stances.
From 60 Minutes this weekend:
I think there’s a strong argument that he’s making it clear that he wants to pull out here, but that he says to make that latter point because he knows he has to get elected. Is the MIC too powerful for him to make good? We’ll see.
We’ll see.
Obama in the White House? Though he’s a Democratic front runner, he’s still a long shot in November. The rise of Barack Obama is quickly becoming John McCain’s last and best hope of becoming president.
Sometimes no Peace
After tonight, and the new polls, he’s still a longshot?
From Drudge headlines:
And he’s beating McCain head-to-head nationwide.
Your logic isn’t keeping pace w/ Obama’s momentum. Of course, in this race, it could all change…
A – how can he talk about not setting up “permanent bases” when that is exactly what they are spending hundreds of millions on right now? it’s insane or disingenuous or… i don’t know what. people have to know it’s not like this is already been paid for.
I believe that the emotions and the insurgency stirred up during the several months of the primaries and runup to the primaries, including emotions stirred up by the Clintons’ MLK and other Clintons’ remarks that helped to alienate some of their usually very strong Democratic black support, with all the media hyping these primaries like never before, has led to Obama’s frontrunning, and may lead to his Democratic candidacy and to his election as president (with Hillary on his ticket a la LBJ) if and only if Obama is believed by the MIC to be able to serve the MIC maximally over the next decade or two; otherwise Obama will lose to Hillary or lose to John McCain.
To win, Obama must have been perceived and even conceived (as early as some years ago) by the MIC to be able to help the MIC’s (the military-industrial-organized crime complex) primary components along these lines:
1. An Obama administration must be able to help relieve the MIC as MIC from blame for Iraq and economic trouble; the next president should help celebrate the presidency as a personality locus of power and help to maintain blame for ongoing woes on Bush and Cheney as personalities, rather than leading to an analysis of MIC. Bush and Cheney have done a good job in this themselves, constantly drawing fire including impeachment movements, thus helping to protect MIC as MIC
2. An Obama administration must help heroine income and cocaine income in the U.S.
3. An Obama administration must ultimately help the prison industrial complex aspects of the MIC
4. An Obama administration must help to distinguish between acceptable dissidence within the U.S. and unacceptable dissidence.
I predict that Obama may well run with Hillary on his ticket if he continues to be spirited into the nomination and the presidency, that he will be assassinated and that Hillary will wind up facing the shitty four years that some conservatives are already gearing up to help put a Democrat in office. Obama’s murder will help MIC establish acceptable from unacceptable dissidence and criticism and help to reinforce the for us or against us (MIC) regime articulated by Bush. The next administration should help MIC further the Homeland security/Patriot regimen now in progress, and lead the majority of Americans to bring back Reagan/Bush/McCain type security/military focus following one term of Hillary-election-in-her-own-right (a la LBJ) or immediately following Hillary’s succession over Obama’s dead body. Or, maybe Obama will survive and serve MIC’s purposes for a four year hiatus from overbearingness, which will fail to solve international or domestic economic conundrums and lead in itself to a counterinsurgence resurgence of neoconism.
The U.S. MIC system is not going to start playing democratic games with its presidency; I am saying this not just as an analyst, but as a former operative in its machinations, and once again I refer you to my semi-autobiographical manifesto
After tonight, and the new polls, he’s still a longshot?
Your logic isn’t keeping pace w/ Obama’s momentum. Of course, in this race, it could all change…
The political polls have proven themselves highly inaccurate.
To wit: New Hampshire
Bush is now outspokenly supporting McCain as the Republican nominee.
The over sixties that I’ve had the opportunity to hear out on Obama have little to no faith in his abilities as Commander-in-Chief and even doubt the sincerity of his allegiance to the U.S., since he was partially reared outside the country and has family abroad with Muslim heritage.
In light of the primary momentum we see today, there is already serious consideration being given to halting the scheduled draw down of U.S. troops from Iraq beyond 5 brigades and we remain on the brink of crisis with Iran.
If the Iranian situation escalates into military conflict prior to election day, it could have a severely negative impact on the political fortunes of Obama or Clinton running against McCain on Nov. 4th.
Both have issued plenty of tough talk regarding dealing with the Iranians and Obama has made strong statements regarding unilateral action if necessary in Pakistan as well.
Should the current administration decide push has come to shove, and it’s their call to make, the public is going to once again rally in support of the troops and McCain has proven his metal in combat and loyalty, enduring extended captivity as a POW.
Bottom line is that there’s been half a trillion invested into Iraq on the books for the purpose of maintaining U.S. dominance in the region. In real costs it’s more like 2 trillion inclusive of Afghanistan and major investments in support bases throughout the Middle East.
The neo-cons aren’t going to walk away from control of this “investment” with oil over $90.00 a barrel.
An even more nightmarish scenario
Sometimes no Peace
A – how can he talk about not setting up “permanent bases” when that is exactly what they are spending hundreds of millions on right now? it’s insane or disingenuous or… i don’t know what. people have to know it’s not like this is already been paid for.
The answer to the question of permanent military bases and the extended presence of U.S. troops and at minimum a continued heavy political and economic influence on Iraq is quite easily discerned from the floorplan of the U.S. embassy complex in Baghdad.
U.S. troops remain stationed on “permanent” bases in Germany, Japan and South Korea. It’s all about the oil in the Middle East and U.S. “influence” in whatever form is deemed strategically necessary will remain in Iraq until it’s gone.
There are so many unknowns this time, and whether the MIC is monolithic enough to exert controls is probably unknown even to them. The corrupt faction and the fascist NWO faction aren’t necessarily working towards the same end – will they self-destruct in a power war?
Then, the U.S. is a huge debtor nation about to go into a massive downturn. We’ve never been in this situation before. There is nothing with which to back currencies, and currencies are almost irrelevant with electronic money. I don’t think anyone knows anymore how to establish the value of money – I see very chaotic times ahead, and I’m hoping Obama, who seems to be extremely bright and prescient, is positioning himself to rescue some good out of it. I certainly don’t see Hillary or Bill as having any insights.
certainly don’t see Hillary or Bill as having any insights.
in the case of any major terrorist attack or the kind of downturn that will create widespread civil unrest, it has nothing to do with the executive branch, there are other tiers of military oversight that immediately come into play. the recent hoopla about IfraGard was pretty illuminating, here’s that crazy quote from an insider at the meeting:
then add that to this somewhat alarmist but fascinating take on the state of the FDIC. here are the first few graphs:
U.S. troops remain stationed on “permanent” bases in Germany, Japan and South Korea.
saw this today, apparently there are no permanent bases, except Guantanamo.
Depends on what your definition of permanent is I guess.
Your previous posts both relevant and ominous.
There’s no question that a period of demand destruction will be soon upon us and the social and political upheaval that will accompany it will be unprecedented in U.S. history.
Considering that turbulent history, we are headed into some very troubled waters.
Sometimes no Peace
The Chickenma reports on the comparative records of the two Democrat primary candidates is quite telling regarding which of the two is ready for the chief executive job. The difference in the substance of the proactive legislative records is stunning, plus, I’m sorry to say, the bureaucracy will keep a woman president out of the loop even more than any male president has been. Bill will not be able to help that as “first gentleman.” Hillary has no history of executive experience and failed to even manage her relationship with her husband in the White House by getting feed from Secret Service agents and others who must have known something was going on with Bill’s pants down. Hillary was not creative enough to dress up in nurse’s or schoolgirl’s outfits and excel at an executive first lady’s blow job. Hillary has some very democratic party like legislative orientations, but has never been able to move forward in any of those areas within the Senate. Her great strength is in her persistence as a confident woman rhetor. She talks a good line, but would excel mainly in shmoozing nicely with ingrained Democratic party and corporate special interests. That’s just my opinion.
Meanwhile, even though the MIC is not absolutely monolithic, in fact, its dependence on organized crime has made it deeply vulnerable, it will get the president it thinks will serve it best in the next administration, even if it becomes more vulnerable to crack up in the process. Now, whether it wants to keep the military pressure cranked up as high as it can go under McCain or whether it wants to present the appearance of some downward military adjustment under a Democrat, is not obvious to me at this point, and I don’t remember (don’t ask me to explain that here) having been tipped as to how MIC wants to play this.
Some military restraint for four years while the world goes through some economic chaos may be the MIC strategy for coming back later with unbridled force (with public support). Neither Obama nor Hillary would or could totally abandon Iraq or any other U.S. military commitment and either one would have an easier time exploding in some new military commitment (like against China or even Iran) under the right trumped up circumstances that even Obama would not try to resist. Otherwise, the behind the scenes Kissinger, Brezinski, neocon braintrust of the MIC may want McCain to keep pushing the current military commitments and NOT start something new because the antiwar movement might grow stronger and more uncontrollable under McCain.
What antiwar movement?
Common Dreams, Counterpunch, Antiwar, etc., etc., SDS, etc., all the rhetoric and demonstrations that helped evolve the 70% U.S. polls against the war. Some of it has moved into the Obama “insurgency” and some of it has relaxed. It’s there. It’s real. It’s a potential. It’s part of what the MIC takes into consideration as it cooks up its scripts for future policy and designs a figurehead to represent it.
I’ve been a part of what you speak in the streets, but it has no muscle, no teeth, no political power.
There was division within the “movement” prior to the “surge” about how or when withdrawal from Iraq was appropriate.
Many within bought into the excuse that once occupied, we couldn’t evacuate our troops from Iraq until the insurgency was quelled and order restored, as if combat troops are actually have the capacity or intent to rebuild the damage they’ve inflicted on Iraqi society.
You can’t be effectively antiwar until you acknowledge the motive, purpose and effect of an armed invasion and occupation.
Sometimes no Peace
demand destruction
interesting coupling. i like it.
As an abstract concept, yeah.
As the prevailing political and societal reality, not likely.
Peace,
You can’t be effectively antiwar until you acknowledge the motive, purpose and effect of an armed invasion and occupation.
Barack Obama: First against then empowered with a seat in the U.S. Senate has supported the war. Insurgency?
Sometimes no Peace
Delusional Hope: The Obama Rapture: Obama hoped that he could tap into the national desire for change from the awful conditions produced by the Bush administration by selling hope to voters rather than his experience and accomplishments. Like a political medicine-man he has succeeded as a compelling seller of hope, better than the best infomercial charlatan.
Congratulate the Le Moyne College Dolphins Men’s Lacrosse Team on winning the championship.
That’s legislation to be proud of. Shit like that just makes Hillary’s comments about Obama not having introduced and/or had any legislation passed into law even more retarded and pointless.
I guess Obama just doesn’t have the skill to get meaningful legislation passed like Hillary does. Nothing had helped the US more than all the important legislation celebrating the deaths of people who died hundreds of years ago, giving post offices names, congratulating Lacrosse and ping-pong teams on winning championships and putting places that aren’t even part of the United States into wilderness protection programs. (that while places like ANWR are part of the US and need to be put back into wilderness protection programs)
The more she talks about her supposed qualifications and experience the more she looks like a clueless tool. I guess thats why she never gets into specifics about all the vital, important legislation she has got through congress.
“That may, you know, be where this is headed,” she added, “but of course we have to decide who’s on the top of ticket. I think that the people of Ohio very clearly said that it should be me.”
Hillary Clinton hints at a dream ticket with Barack Obama
How insurgent is that?
Trying to repeat my earlier point: A figurehead of a grassroots movement, if it is sizable, may indeed start off as a shill and a charlatan, but eventually will get caught up in his own myth, ala RFK. When Obama says change comes from the bottom up, take that as a clue. There was never ever a winning candidate who wasn’t initially approved by the big boys, so it sounds naive to even be discussing this – it’s the future potential of an Obama movement, not the posturing to get approved on high.
What else have we got in terms of “hope” right now? Give it a shot.
I didn’t read a word of this, including the comments.