Keep 'em rolling.
Posted on 09/17/2008 1:24:45 PM PDT by goldstategop
As bellwethers of liberal demoralization about this election go, I've not yet come across anything so clanging as the following comment from Hannah Rosin, responding to the phenomenon of Sarah Palin: "One of my many depressed Obama-supporting friends suggests a tidy solution: Repeal the 19th Amendment." That would be the one that extends the franchise to women, and the point was driven home by the forum Rosin chose for relaying this morose alternative: the XX Factor feminist blog at Slate. I'll save you the trouble of searching out any black conservative's anguished recommendation that the 15th Amendment be put on hold until after John McCain is elected.
Yes, it's rather moonlight and self-pity in Democratic circles now that the prospect of an Obama administration may not be the certainty it seemed only weeks ago. "There is a growing sense of doom among Democrats I have spoken to," the Financial Times quotes a party fundraiser who formerly supported Hillary Clinton. "People are going crazy, telling the campaign 'you've got to do something'." Evidently, even congressional candidates from Obama's party have taken to distancing themselves from him and declined also to attack John McCain. Perhaps most telling of all was the banal remark from Bill Clinton, taken by Michael Crowley at The New Republic to be inspirational, that Obama would still win "pretty handily."
If you didn't know any better, you'd say an Obama falling-off is in progress. "Another election lost," runs the grim thought through the minds of perspiring Democrats, many of whom have misplaced their nuance once again and rushed to defend every line of attack on the Barack of the Right, from suggesting she owes her political career to an absence of abortions to demanding a post-natal Warren Commission to determine her true from fabricated offspring. So far Palin has proved impervious to even legitimate complaints made against her, and there are some women I know who hate everything she stands for but can't help but love the fact that she stands in high heels. Camille Paglia admires Palin's Wild West style of feminism and compares her to Madonna--and not the one with which social conservatives typically identify.
In his almost jaw-dropping inability to stand up to the revitalized McCain campaign (at least not without allowing it to dictate the rules of every engagement) Obama appears more and more like a hapless professor in a chaotic classroom, the kind who'd love to get to the lesson plan but is reduced to meekly asking everyone to "settle down now." Mark Cunningham of the New York Post offers a shrewd explanation for the disarray: It's David Axelrod's fault. Obama's chief strategist is used to managing urban campaigns where the stakes are not only smaller but the contestants are barely distinguishable from each other. And in the ultra-specific give-and-take of a primary, having a city-boy genius who can split differences and siphon off votes is an asset. But in a national contest against a well-organized and Machiavellian party machine, which specializes in the "vision thing," it's a liability:
New Yorkers may recall that [Axelrod] was on the Freddy Ferrer team - and how the class-warfare theme of "the Two New Yorks" managed to lose the 2005 mayoral race in a city that's overwhelmingly Democratic. (Yes, Bloomberg had his billions - but he was beatable.)
Nor did the same shtick do much for Axelrod client John Edwards, who didn't exactly score big with "the Two Americas" in the Democrats' 2004 presidential primaries.
With the economy being the biggest domestic issue, the shtick was to have been embodied by Joe Biden, a true-grit Irish Catholic with prolier-than-thou street cred. But since his selection as a running mate, Biden has been either a cipher or a disaster. His latest blunder, made in an attempt to wrest the feminine mystique away from Palin and restore it in his own party's warrior woman, was to suggest that Hillary Clinton would have actually made the better addition to the ticket. Don't my mind me, I'm just running for vice president.
Meanwhile, Obama can't decide whom he's running against: a longtime senator and Cold War veteran or a first-term governor who derives her sense of internationalism from living next door to our Cold War enemy. (Nabokov on what scenes he would like to have seen filmed: "The Russians leaving Alaska, delighted with the deal. Shot of a seal applauding.") Obama may or may not be better equipped to deal with North Korea, having been born in nearby Hawaii, but he sounds slightly insecure assailing Palin as a beginner in the game of brinkmanship, which is why he's mainly letting others assail her on his behalf. And yet... The real challenger is still McCain, and Vladimir Putin is not a product of the post-Cold War era or cognitively evolved beyond its sham moral equivalences and bullying rhetoric. Obama must know that, following Russia's invasion of Georgia, many even within his own ranks are worried that he hadn't got the sufficient mileage to stare down a familiar adversary.
As to the foreign policy issue that got him nominated, where'd that go? I can't remember the last time we heard those dire and willfully misconstrued words about "100 years" in Iraq. (Instead, there's been lots of fact-checking on a Bridge to Nowhere.) Come to that, we hardly even hear him speak the word "Iraq" these days unless it's to concede to that the troop surge, which he opposed and which was championed most loudly by his opponent, has succeeded beyond "our wildest dreams." Next up: Admitting that it wasn't such a bad idea to remove Saddam Hussein, after all...
There was a moment during the primary when Obama had every mathematical advantage over Clinton yet still seemed somehow overwhelmed by her--almost bowed, really. It began to tell on just how narrow that advantage wound up. Yet we're constantly reminded that one of his great attributes as a politician is his ability to learn quickly and to recover from his mistakes. Why, then, does he seem so behind the curve and so committed to repeating them?
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
They are doing something. They strapped a teleprompter onto the Gaffe Machine Buffoon! Democrats no longer have to vote for Obama. They can vote for a Teleprompter!
Keep 'em rolling.
Let’s all just call him the Teleprompter for now on, maybe it will catch on in the media, after all, they don’t want him saying things like “my muslim faith” and having to be corrected by the press, “you mean your Christian faith, right obama?” oh, yes of course ....
The fact is, Obama has never had to run for office until now. He got into the state legislature by having a crooked judge eliminate his competition. And he got into the Senate by having the machine crush the Republican party in his state by leaking sealed divorce details to eliminate his only real opponent.
His intelligence has been wildly inflated, his speaking ability depends on a teleprompter or an ear plug, his experience is zero, he has no old friends that he isn’t obliged to hide, and he is a Communist-Muslim extremist and probably not even American.
How someone with those creds could get as far as he did says a lot about the Left Wing Press.
The O’Prompter.
“One of my many depressed Obama-supporting friends suggests a tidy solution: Repeal the 19th Amendment.”
Although I’m sure this comment was made in jest, it illuminates a disturbing dark side of the radical left. The Obama campaign wants staff at WGN prosecuted and jailed for airing the infamous ‘Ayers ad’, and they seriously discuss using the so-called Fairness Doctrine to silence dissent. Liberals openly talk about the ‘talk radio problem’ and their desire to shut it down. It is clear that liberals believe the guarantees of the Constitution should only apply to comments and expressions of belief of which they approve, and have absolutely no problem with censorship and prosecution of people with nonconforming values. The freedoms Americans have enjoyed for more than 200 years are in serious jeopardy, and could disappear entirely. And the Obama campaign is right now on the leading edge of a movement to do so.
Someone suggested that Obama's bizarre decision-making process should be understood as that of a classic flake. Actually, it should be obvious by now that he is a left-brained obsessive-compulsive type afflicted with grandiose overideation. He gets confused, distracted, and lost in details, unable to let certain things go even when it is in his best interest to do so. Neither strategy - attacking Palin or McCain - is working very well. The campaign staff is letting their emotions get the better of them.
A good example was getting stuck on McCain not using email. The anal-retentive reaction to this and the rash judgment of going forward with it in an attack ad are good examples of the implosion of the Obama campaign.
“Yet we’re constantly reminded that one of his great attributes as a politician is his ability to learn quickly and to recover from his mistakes.”
Apparently, only when he has a teleprompter.
Spot on.
I’ve wondered how somebody can claim to represent the common man, when his favorite food is a salad green the rest of us have never heard of.
The inherent problem with being liberal and winning an election is that before you can define yourself, you have to attack conservative thinking and become everything to everyone else. Eventually, a group in your base will be offended. In Obama’s case, women.
“when his favorite food is a salad green the rest of us have never heard of”.
Is that what arugula is?
Years ago a series of novels was written based on the characters from the TV series version of MASH. They were quite funny (or not - depending on taste) and will likely never see the light of day again because they poked fun at several PC-protected classes - including queers.
One of the characters in a couple of the books was a Ted Baxter - like news reader who was a total fraud - could not speak without a teleprompter, bald and snaggle-toothed under his harpiece and caps, etc. Obama reminds me of this character, for some strange reason.
You coined that one. The O'prompter.
Obama is a fake. He just doesn’t have much substance and it is starting to show.
I live in Rome, the land of “arugola” which here is called rughetta. In days old they’d just throw in a few leaves to flavor up the rest of the salad. The fact that Barack eats arugola is to his credit... ‘cause it really is delicious. I hate Obama with a passion, firstly because of his despicable position on infanticide and then Rev. Wright, William Ayers, the fact that he wrote two autobiographies but keeps his past sealed; I completely mistrust such a rapid rise to fame fueled by absolutely no accomplishment.
I’ve never followed an American election with so much interest, such is my fear that the USA will lose her legendary horse sense and follow this man who the very colorful Rev. Manning calls a long-legged Mack Daddy... but Arugola is delicious. Try growing some in your garden (it’s really a just a weed) and add it to your salad. It’s not snobby at all (like caviar or champagne)!
Please don’t associate arugola with that baby-murderer or with $30,000 dinners in Beverly Hills... It’s as cheap and “popolare” as chives or dandelions. It’s actually Sarah Palinish in spirit as a foodstuff. There is nothing at all socialist, radical-chic about this humble plant which if allowed to speak would undoubtedly vote for wildlife moose-hunting Sarah and not for this inner city hustler who promises to command the oceans and heal the planet.
The left is putting a lot of miles on Tina Fey’s line “I can see Russia from my house!” and I’m trying to remember if they mocked Obama during the primaries, for having the foreign policy experience of going to grade school in Indonesia.
But, we all knew this would happen.
It’s been three weeks. Palin is still standing after an unprecedented fury from the left.
Unfortunately, Obama is still standing too. The cardinal hinge of his candidacy is gone: the “Iraq is lost, get us out now” call is no more. Yet all we are hearing about is what the left can turn up, or make up, about Sarah Palin.
I’m beginning to understand why some poor souls shoot their televisions.
Exactly. Saw a DU post a couple of days ago that said the next person that says global warming is a joke should be literally socked in the f***ing mouth. He was serious.
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