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This is not an endorsement

I’ve been watching the election season like a passerby on the street trying not to be noticed as I peer through the dark glass on the front of an adult bookstore. Of course I want to look inside; it’s just that I don’t want anyone to see me while I do it. I haven’t commented on the election much because I don’t wish to become known as a political pundit, I like to believe that my mother and father raised me to be better than that, but I will take just a moment and say something about it that might just shock you.

I think its time I reveal that I have been following one particular candidate since his candidacy was announced. At first I thought it was a joke candidacy, meant only to boost his standings in the party and get his name out in the public mind for a future and far more likely shot at the “big prize”. Yet, with all the shock that comes from the idea of “A Capulet dating a Montague!” I find myself here now, during each of the primaries and caucases rooting and in some cases even cheering when the results for this particular candidate come in.

I’m not doing out of a strategy meant only to beat the far more formidible candidate by backing the beatable one instead, I’m doing it because despite my political leanings and patriotism for this country, I find this one candidate, whom I once dismissed as one who would end up one day only as “a new metaphor for lightweight” is instead the one I find the most interesting to watch, and I dare say the most courageous in his campaign.

I’m talking about Barack Obama.

You see, you just don’t take on the Clintonistas lightly. They are brass knuckle, suspicious flat tires, brick through your window in the middle of the night campaigners. They are dedicated to the cause, which is to say, themselves being in power. You stand in their way; you get the full force of influence applied against you. You become “One of them”, that infamous list of people who are part of a “right wing cabal” mean to hold back the waves of the progressive future that is promised by the American “Evita”.

And yet, Obama has taken on “the machine” and survived. Despite their self agrandized reputation, Obama has shown the Clintonistas are in fact, beatable and more to the point, beatable without someone from the left needing to become an “evil right wing hatemonger”. There is nothing more delicious to me than to watch the former President reach into his black bag of rhetoric and try to weave a spell that casts Obama as a member of the right wing, only to have Obama smile and watch all that pixie dust from the wand of “The Great Prevaricator” wilt away, which of course makes Bill Clinton even more angry and even more impotent in the next attack.

There simply aren’t that many men who have been able to withstand that assault. Obama has managed to do it with a smile. I like that.

I find it fascinating to watch the former President get red faced angry that the press is not doing what he wants them to do, as her perceives that they did for him in the past. Poor fellah doesn’t seem to understand that the fawning 60’s generation “dry-look” press of his day have been largely replaced by bare knuckle internet kids who were born in the era of Reagan and have as their homepage the nemesis of Clinton, The Drudge Report. Such is life at internet speed which is something he never could quite deal with during his administration. That former enemy has now grown a new layer of muscle and outer armor plate over the past decade when they last locked horns and he lost. The press of today finds Clinton “wagging finger” wand of 1998 to be just as impotent as it was then and now its twice as pathetic. Worse for Evita, everytime he opens his mouth, she becomes just a little bit smaller, reminding more than a few of us of the 1980’s Lily Tomlin movie that is serving as a metaphor for her candidacy. It’s gotten so bad that press coverage of the Clintonista campaign rarely mentions the junior Senator from New York, just the latest machinations of the once great and powerful man making the world safe from the right wing, who is now increasingly seen by many as just a white haired bumbler pulling levers of machinery behind the curtain making special effects on the wall.

Poor Bill, he doesn’t realize that this is the age of HDTV and in this age, its important that you hide the strings as best you can because now everyone can see everything all the time. All this happened because one man said;“ Heck if the Democrats want to run a junior Senator with little experience based only on the value of minority status then let them run me!” and he hasn’t backed down an inch since then to the wall of intimdation and damnation thrown up against him not by us evil right wingers but by his own party and polticial fellow travellers.

I respect the fact that he has withstood every attack launched against him. I respect that he hasn’t just stood there and been nice about it and not responded in kind. He’s handed back as much as they have handed out, and considering the forces allied against him, this is no mean feat. I respect a man who has courage, and that man has a certain kind of courage to do what he is doing.

It’s not Iwo Jima courage, but its courage all the same and it deserves our respect.

So what do I, a “no-necked”, rockribbed, knuckle dragging, rightwinger of the first order get out of an Obama candidacy? Well a black man is running for the Office of President of the United States, and that seems to be ok with most folks. It just totally ruins one of the columns of the temple of mythology that shelters the left. The country as a horror of racism has a real live black man running for President, even in the south and the man has the ability to campaign and win his party nomination.

A black man running for President, and no one seems to really care (except of course the Clintonistas), I think that says something about all of us, something rather positive. It was always ok with me but I’m just not like a lot of folks; I don’t tend to believe in this superstitious nonsense called racial classification. I tend to think that were all of the same race, the human race, and this stuff we call “race” is a rather new thing that only happened in the last 9,000 years or so. It’s something that came about only with the human diaspora that occurred at the end of the last ice age. Give it another 9,000 years and it all goes away and we all look like Kennewick Man once again.

Oh I know, crazy me. Obamas candidacy and potential Presidency says that race doesn’t matter, which is what Ive been saying for a long time. I think that’s a good thing. The Clintons want it to matter because its all they have to run on, which is pathetic. It doesn’t matter Obama and his ability to win beyond his "race" is proof of that and good for us all that it doesn’t matter anymore.

I like his campaign because he has the gall to be a Democrat and offer praise of Ronald Reagan. I like that he did it for two reasons; first because President Reagan is worthy of praise. Second, because of the genius that by doing so sent Bill Clinton into a lather, which predictably backfired on Bill Clinton, it’s a “win-win-win” strategy. Obama has Clinton playing Obamas game and not the other way around.

A smart man that Senator Obama, and I admire smart men.

I also like the fact that Obama is beatable in the general election by those of us on the other side of the political argument. Yet, if Evita overcomes this challenge from Obama, I like the fact that she has now had to fight and claw and work very hard for this election. Our big fear before Obamas challenge was that the wave of inevitability would sweep her into office with little or no effort and that the “mandate for change” would give her the cover to do what she wanted, which is nothing less than moving us rapidly towards European socialism. That being a system which has failed to produce the utopia it promises in every part of the world that its been tried no matter how often it is tried but that wont stop those who want to try it here.

This sort of thing is much like hoping that the flightless pengiun really will fly if you just move it to the right place and give it the right incentive to do so. No matter how much you think the pengiun should fly, the penguin will respectfully disagree. Humans have an inate desire to be free, and putting more controls on people and their behaviour, no matter how well intentioned, does not make you more free and in the end, people will reject it.

I admire Obama for not putting the ‘flag motif” on his campaign literature. Look closely, and you don’t see it. You expect to see it, because you always see it, but its not there.
I admire that he doesn’t wear a lapel pin with a flag. The flag repels Democrats and Leftists like vampires are repelled at the sign of the Cross. Of course Democrats are also attracted to votes like vampires are to blood, so they are usually in a quandry. Wave the flag and get elected or don’t wave the flag, stand true to their beliefs and lose. I respect the fact that he’s willing to say what so many other Democrats say yet dare not do for risk of “offending the voters”. His willingness to do what other Democrats only dream of doing despite the risk shows a certain level integrity to his thinking.

It also ensures that I don’t have to look any further at this candidate or ideology. If you cant see symbol of this country in the light of the glory for which it stands, you don’t get to play on my team. I thank him deeply for not wasting my time by pretending to be something he is not.

Because of Obama, Evita is no longer "Senator Inevitable" and for that fact alone, he should be thanked by one and all. No one in this country should ever be “inevitable” but she came very close to being just that. I don’t like the precedent that it would have set. But that is no longer, thanks Barak Obama and a few thousand Democrat voters who would not be intimidated by some pretty powerful forces on the side of the “Status Quo”.

Obama has had the audaciousness to say that CNN probably shouldn’t have Begala and Carville commenting about the election when they were and are members of campaign staff. And in the shock of the ages, CNN agreed and removed the two “Clintonista Political Officers” from the channel. It makes me say;“ Why didn’t anyone think of this sooner!” but there you go action gets reaction and the advantage goes to – Obama!

I also like the fact that so many of the Democrat Senators have aligned themselves with Obama. The fun part being that if Evita gets the nomination, she has to fight and fight hard whomever the Republicans nominate, and so long as it’s not Ron Paul that we nominate, I’m pretty sure we’ll do just fine against her with half the Democrat Senate feeding us damaging information from behind the scenes. If I’m wrong and She wins; about half the Democrat Senate will have her tied up in knots for her first term because about half of them are now not just endorsing her competition, they are working actively on Obamas side against her and that’s not something that will go unpunished.

The punishment She will mete out will be small, and it will be petty but most of all, it will be fun to watch. I will stock up on popcorn. Ah, The bitter, acrid smell that comes from the buzzsaw of Democracy as it hits the hardshell of your hopes and dreams. I don’t think Saul Alinsky covered that in his book, at least not the first edition.

In point of fact, Obama has liberated the Democrats from the one force that usurpsed their power in the 1990’s. Not the evil “right wing”, but the Clintons themselves. It was Clinton who lost the House and Senate; it was Clinton who reshaped the countries politics so as to lose the Presidency in 2000. That party has been in long retreat since the days of Clinton. Obama has shown them a brighter future comes only when the clouds of the Clinton finally leave their party for good. If they give the Republicans the lightning rod of Clintonism and not the photogenic type but the Evita type and the Republicans will be in unchecked power for a generation. This is why the Democrat power base in the Senate is in revolt over Evitas acendancy. All she can do is threaten their power, not enhance it and therefore it must not be allowed to succeed.

I respect Senator Obama, I would even go so far as to say I am growing more and more to like him. It might just be the fact that for the moment we have the same enemies, but I see something in his character I did not see before. I hereby I retract my previous statements about his being “diaphanous”.

Come what may in this election, Senator Obama is a force to be dealt with. I cheer his candidacy and his campaign. I think that if I were Democrat, I would not only vote for him but I would actively campaign for him, for he has clearly given even me reasons to hope for the future of this country and that’s not a bad thing to have as the base of your candidacy.

After all, it worked for Ronald Reagan.

Posted @ January 27, 2008 03:21 PM | Current Affairs

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