Let’s face it. Both the wingnuts and the Village hate Obama. They both (for different reasons) want to see McCain vs Clinton in November. Despite their many attacks on him as Steven D points out they’ve not been able to slow the guy down.
And that scares both groups. It means they don’t have the clout they used to have not more than a short time ago. After all, Democrats are supposed to be spineless losers that whimper “Please sir, may I have another?” when beaten about the face and ears, a bunch of self-destructing, self-hating, self-sabotaging milquetoasts. When the Noise Machine goes off, the Dems are supposed to run for cover.
But something’s going on here. Obama seems to actually be giving people hope. And people with hope tend to do unexpected things like fight back. The Wingnuts and the Village can’t have that. The populace must be cowed and pliable, empty vessels ready to receive the bounty of opinions they should have given to them by the Wingnuts and the Village, calling the shots from on high.
Why, this hope crap is starting to lead to Democrats doing insane things like sticking up for the people on things like FISA and torture and issuing contempt citations.
And we can’t have that. Even some in the press are quietly trumpeting this new “Democrats with Hope” malarkey. Well, you’d better believe that the Village isn’t going to put up with THAT any longer. It’s a direct affront to the Village and a direct threat to the Wingnuts, and they’re attacking back. It’s time to treat him as the serious problem he is. And so, they have formulated their plan of attack.
The Democrats are discovering their spines this week. This is not part of the plan, folks. They figure Obama is partially responsible for this, with his “Yes, we can” example. So he’s got to go.
And the attacks on his message of hope are coming hard and fast.
There’s no better path to success than getting people to buy a free commodity. Like the genius who figured out how to get people to pay for water: bottle it (Aquafina was revealed to be nothing more than reprocessed tap water) and charge more than they pay for gasoline. Or consider how Google found a way to sell dictionary nouns– boat, shoe, clock — by charging advertisers zillions to be listed whenever the word is searched.
And now, in the most amazing trick of all, a silver-tongued freshman senator has found a way to sell hope. To get it, you need only give him your vote. Barack Obama is getting millions.
This kind of sale is hardly new. Organized religion has been offering a similar commodity — salvation — for millennia. Which is why the Obama campaign has the feel of a religious revival with, as writer James Wolcott observed, a “salvational fervor” and “idealistic zeal divorced from any particular policy or cause and chariot-driven by pure euphoria.”
Ouch. Barack Obama, snake-oil salesman. Keep this theme in mind, because it’s the new focus of the attacks against him from here on out.
Interestingly, Obama has been able to win these electoral victories and dazzle crowds in one new jurisdiction after another, even as his mesmeric power has begun to arouse skepticism and misgivings among the mainstream media.
ABC’s Jake Tapper notes the “Helter-Skelter cult-ish qualities” of “Obama worshipers,” what Joel Stein of the Los Angeles Times calls “the Cult of Obama.” Obama’s Super Tuesday victory speech was a classic of the genre. Its effect was electric, eliciting a rhythmic fervor in the audience — to such rhetorical nonsense as “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. (Cheers, applause.) We are the change that we seek.”
That was too much for Time’s Joe Klein. “There was something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism,” he wrote. “The message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is.”
Those are some pretty low blows. Krauthammer has the long knives out and the thrust of the attack is painfully clear. Obama is using millions of poor, deluded, weak-minded Democrats. They’re all goofy, slightly naive and above all easily misled.
Now…can you think of anyone else similarly dismissed by the press, similarly reviled by the Wingnuts, and similarly chided by cynics as leading a cult? I’ll give you a hint…he’s still in the race…on the GOP side.
Mike Huckabee.
Yep, the same arguments that many of us have made against the Huckster (who has now been almost completely marginalized by the press) are now being applied to Barack Obama. After all, those same arguments worked so well in getting rid of Huckabee (and to some extent were used against John Edwards as well).
But don’t take my word for it. The Village is selling Obama’s “Yes we can” as “No , he can’t!”
Hillary Clinton probably didn’t watch the stem-winder speech that Barack Obama delivered Tuesday night after cleaning her clock in the Potomac primaries. If not, she should.
It was tiresome.
The speech was classic Obama. Beautifully written and beautifully delivered, the words soaring to the rafters of a Madison, Wis., auditorium filled mostly with 17,000 cheering students. The rookie senator had just come off blowouts of Hillary in Virginia and Maryland.
The senator’s charisma and appeal has been undeniable. He is almost insanely eloquent. Still, about halfway into this (very long) speech, the feeling was hard to shake: This is getting hard to listen to. Again and again.
Idiot Democrats! There’s no hope here! Go back to your ways of quiet desperation and let us run the country before you get taken in by another loser Presidential candidate!
I think the potential vulnerability runs deeper. Strip away the new coat of paint from the Obama message and what you find is not only familiar. It’s a downer.
Up to now, the force of Sen. Obama’s physical presentation has so dazzled audiences that it has been hard to focus on precisely what he is saying. “Yes, we can! Yes, we can!” Can what?
Listen closely to that Tuesday night Wisconsin speech. Unhinge yourself from the mesmerizing voice. What one hears is a message that is largely negative, illustrated with anecdotes of unremitting bleakness. Heavy with class warfare, it is a speech that could have been delivered by a Democrat in 1968, or even 1928.
Here is the edited version, stripped of the flying surfboard:
“Our road will not be easy . . . the cynics. . . where lobbyists write check after check and Exxon turns record profits . . . That’s what happens when lobbyists set the agenda. . . It’s a game where trade deals like Nafta ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers to work for minimum wage at Wal-Mart . . . It’s a game . . . CEO bonuses . . . while another mother goes without health care for her sick child . . . We can’t keep driving a wider and wider gap between the few who are rich and the rest who struggle to keep pace . . . even if they’re not rich . . .”
Here’s his America: “lies awake at night wondering how he’s going to pay the bills . . . she works the night shift after a full day of college and still can’t afford health care for a sister who’s ill . . . the senior I met who lost his pension when the company he gave his life to went bankrupt . . . the teacher who works at Dunkin’ Donuts after school just to make ends meet . . . I was not born into money or status . . . I’ve fought to bring jobs to the jobless in the shadow of a shuttered steel plant . . . to make sure people weren’t denied their rights because of what they looked like or where they came from . . . Now we carry our message to farms and factories.”
It ends: “We can cast off our doubts and fears and cynicism because our dream will not be deferred; our future will not be denied; and our time for change has come.”
Doooooooooooooooom! Fools, everything’s fine! Obama’s message of change is silly! There’s nothing that needs changing!
And did I mention he’s just another Mike Huckabee?
Whatever else, Barack Obama isn’t talking sunshine in America. He’s talking fast and furious. People not yet baptized into Obamamania may start to look past the dazzling theatrics to see a vision of the United States that is quite grim and could wear thin in the general election.
There may indeed be a Message B for the fall in the Obama drawer. This week’s speech, like a televangelist’s, may be designed to drive small contributions. The Web-site version ends with an appeal to donate to “this historic moment.” I suspect, though, that it is the core of the Obama campaign, now or later.
He’s Huckabee! Barmike Huckobama! He’s really everything your cold, cynical hearts despise! Fools! How can your science and logic worshipping selves give in to hope?
The usual sorts are chiming in against him as well, appealing to that logic and cynicism that are part and parcel of being an unhappy, cowed Democrat. The arguments are financial…
Senator Barack Obama is very gloomy about America, and he’s aligning himself with the liberal wing of the Democratic party in hopes of coming to the nation’s rescue. His proposal? Big-government planning, spending, and taxing — exactly what the nation and the stock market doesn’t want to hear.
Obama unveiled much of his economic strategy in Wisconsin this week: He wants to spend $150 billion on a green-energy plan. He wants to establish an infrastructure investment bank to the tune of $60 billion. He wants to expand health insurance by roughly $65 billion. He wants to “reopen” trade deals, which is another way of saying he wants to raise the barriers to free trade. He intends to regulate the profits for drug companies, health insurers, and energy firms. He wants to establish a mortgage-interest tax credit. He wants to double the number of workers receiving the earned-income tax credit (EITC) and triple the EITC benefit for minimum-wage workers.
The Obama spend-o-meter is now up around $800 billion. And tax hikes on the rich won’t pay for it. It’s the middle class that will ultimately shoulder this fiscal burden in terms of higher taxes and lower growth.
This isn’t free enterprise. It’s old-fashioned-liberal tax, and spend, and regulate. It’s plain ol’ big government. The only people who will benefit are the central planners in Washington.
…as well as political…
Liberals are attracted to Obama’s views on foreign policy, where he stands to Clinton’s left; centrists like his domestic policy, where he has challenged liberal conventions more than Clinton has on issues such as merit pay for teachers. The wider divide is over Obama’s governing strategy. Most attractive to moderates is Obama’s potential as a mediator — his promise to “reach across party lines … and to bring people together,” as Sebelius says. Most attractive to liberals is Obama’s potential as a mobilizer — his ability to excite and activate voters. “Our members really believe to make change, you don’t just need a president, you need a movement,” says Eli Pariser, MoveOn’s executive director.
These contrasting motivations could easily collide if Obama wins the presidency. In theory, his red-state supporters like his mobilizing effect (in their endorsements, Sebelius and McCaskill cited Obama’s impact on their children.) In practice, an energized grassroots progressive movement might push a President Obama toward liberal positions that red-staters could not easily adopt.
Conversely, many liberals consider Obama’s promise to bridge the partisan divide naive or even misguided. Pariser warns that if Obama concedes too much to Republicans in his search for unity, “I’m not sure the movement that he is building will let him do it.” Put another way, Pariser expects Obama the mobilizer to constrain Obama the mediator.
…and even the social.
Big deal. People like him. That usually happens with the front-runners. They get more votes, and then they win. (Although with these maddening Democratic Party apportionment rules, I think winning also requires hopping on one foot.) But isn’t there a natural limit to our enthusiasm for to this kind of sweeping phenomenon? Isn’t the generation that Obama has so successfully courted usually the first to toss overhyped products, even the overhyped products with which they were at first so enthralled? More generally, shouldn’t Democrats who have complained that George Bush was elected on the strength of a popularity contest be nervous that this blossoming Obamadulation is getting out of hand?
So far, no one seems to much care. There have been a few pieces from columnists questioning the messianic impulse with Obama, and a mocking Web site, but that’s it for backlash. OK, so I’ll say it: Some of Obama’s supporters have gone around the bend. There was the woman in New Hampshire who compared him with Christ. There was Maria Shriver’s comparison of the candidatewith the state of California, with the rhetorical fervor usually seen only after a preacher shouts, “You are healed!”
There is also plenty of self-hype to knock down. Obama is not as bold as he claims and doesn’t tell as many hard truths as he professes to. His Senate record of bipartisanship is fine as far as it goes, but that isn’t as big a deal as he makes it seem. Cooperating with Republicans on nuclear proliferation and lobbying reform is not nearly as hard, nor does it require the same skills, as forging agreement on taxes and spending, judicial nominations, or electronic surveillance. On the day Sen. Patrick Leahy endorsed Obama and I asked him what problem Obama could solve with his powers of bipartisanship, the Democrat from Vermont asserted Kennedy parallels rather than name one.
No matter how you slice it, the Village and the Wingnuts are doing their dead-level best to sell Obama as a big, fat, fakey faker fake guy.
But it’s the notion that only Barack Obama can save our souls that is the most offensive part of the speech, by far. Government doesn’t exist to save souls; it exists to ensure domestic tranquility and provide for the common defense. If I feel my soul needs saving, the very last place I’d look (in the US) for a savior would be Washington DC or Capitol Hill. I’ll trust God and Jesus Christ with my soul, and I’m not going to mistake Barack Obama for either one.
This, though, is the religion of statism distilled to its essence. Only a government can rescue people from the consequences of their own decisions. Only government programs can provide for your every need, and only government can use your money wisely enough to ensure that your needs get covered. Individuals cannot possibly manage to help their neighbors through their churches or community organizations, let alone encourage people to do for themselves.
And all you need to enter the statist Utopia is to sell your soul. So that it can be fixed.
No, thank you.
Indeed, Barack is the New Huckabee. All the old saw about the “church of secularism” and “the flim-flam artist behind the pulpit” selling us a line are being dredged up again.
In 2008, the far more plausible (not to mention electable) Barack Obama has assumed the role of the Magical Democrat.
After his Super Tuesday victories, Obama delivered one of his more stirring speeches. Unlike Hillary Clinton, who delivers such set-pieces flanked by musty relics from her husband’s administration like Wesley Clark and Madeleine Albright, Obama speaks amidst a throng of enthusiastic young followers. The Fox News cameras that night made a point of focusing on one woman who was so overwhelmed by the candidate that her eyes repeatedly welled up. Meanwhile, radio host James Vicevich has compiled a growing list of swooning victims at Obama rallies. (A report from Madison, Wisconsin: “Before the senator arrived, students were tossing around an inflatable cow above the crowd. Three people fainted in the midst of all the enthusiasm.”)
It makes one feel like a killjoy to point out that Barack Obama is merely a man, and a politician at that. At the risk of being even more of a sourpuss, one can note that, in spite of the meaning he’s already giving to so many people’s lives, Obama is a thoroughly conventional liberal. At least when Bill Clinton ran, he did so promising a number of things that weren’t in the traditional Democrat’s bailiwick. Aside from a very occasional, very tepid suggestion that teachers’ unions may be fallible, Obama resides firmly within the Democratic mainstream on every major issue.
Nevertheless, there’s something about him that encourages his supporters to consider the impossible achievable. People don’t weep in his presence because they have heard the details of his health care prescriptions and concur with his proposals. Obama’s success has relied on his campaign occupying a higher plane, a place of hopes realized and dreams come true.
The only problem with being the Magical Democrat is that most elections end up focusing on issues; Obama then may look smaller than he does now. It is harder to strike a pose as a world-historical figure when quibbling over the top marginal income tax rate.
The challenge for Republicans, specifically John McCain, will be to conduct the general election in the real world of limited government and dangerous foreign malefactors rather than in the Obama fantasy world. The good news for McCain is that he has far more experience dealing with the ugliness of the real world than Obama has, and can speak to our looming challenges with far more authenticity.
In the end, the attacks on Obama are aimed at knocking out hope itself, that the Democrats should be a bunch of sour, cynical unbelivers who should be content with being miserable.
Miserable about the GOP being in charge. Miserable about the economy screwing them over. Miserable about the state of civil liberties and the endless war in Iraq.
Miserable enough to give up in despair and just take it like…a Democrat should. Like Democrats HAVE been taking it for years now. Miserable enough to go “Yeah, but why bother? We just keep losing.”
We’ve lost enough to put Bush in the White House for eight years and to empower him to make pleanty of us far more miserable now, and even MORE miserable in the future.
They don’t want us to do anything about it. They like the old Democrats of 2007, the ones that talked good but did nothing.
And they’re so eager to bring that back that they are destroying not just Obama, but hope in general. They’re trying to depress us to death.
But maybe, having seen what could happen if we actually do something and believe we can do something, not all of us are going to forget and go back to moping and pausing just long enough to get bitchslapped back down by the Village and Wingnuts.
They’re truly scared of the next four years. What they could mean. So they’re trying to wreck it now before that change even gets started. They want the status quo, only more of it: John McCain.
Don’t let the bastards get you down.