The Gospel According to John

Oh hell to the no...

As you all know, I’ve laid off the politics for several months. But today, someone went and did something so ridiculous and so disingenuous, that I am now duty-bound to officially break my political silence.

That someone is Barack Obama.

Imagine it. I’m sitting at my desk, being a good little editor, and I decide to take a quick break to rest my eyes. So, I log into my junk email account for a moment to see what’s going on with the Men’s Health Fitness Tips (that I never use), discounted Broadway theatre tickets, and who’s blowing who on the porn site I cancelled years ago (because who pays for porn anymore?). And, of course, amidst all these disparate blurbs, is the latest goings-on over at my beloved HuffingtonPost.com

Imagine my surprise when I see this greeting me in my inbox:

And so I clicked, hoping I was either on glue, or hash, or opium, or had gone temporarily batshi* crazy, or was dreaming, or hallucinating, or had slipped into a parallel dimension, or was having an out of body experience. But then the email opened, and I saw this:

Excuse me?

In case you’re not up on what President Dipfuc* has been up to the past eight years, so-called “faith-based initiatives” are Dipfuc*’s clever scheme to funnel social service money—federal social service money, as in your tax dollars—to religious organizations and charities. Which is, you know…more or less illegal. That whole pesky church/state separation thing. Not to mention discrimination. And the reulting lawsuits when, say, I get fired from my job at the YMCA for bringing my boyfriend to the office Christmas party. 

Yes, I’m hyperbolizing. And, to be fair, there are already regulations about that sort of discrimination in place in the current incarnation of the plan, and there would be in Obama’s extension as well. But the point remains the same: Giving federal money to religious groups—regardless of how that money will be used—is opening a can of worms and swinging the doors wide open for discrimination—both real and implied. Regulations or no.

But all of this is irrelevant. Because the REAL issue here?

Everyone open up your calendars and note the date. Because I think we have all officially witnessed Obama’s first certifiable, undeniable ploy to kiss Conservative ass and cravenly tongue the taint of swing voters—which, in case you’ve been sleeping for the past year, is the opposite of what Obama’s about.

Or so we’ve been told.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not so naïve as to think that Obama can continue to ride all the way to Pennsylvania Avenue on the feel-good wave he’s been surfing for the past year. But there’s buttering up the center, and then there’s sycophantism at the expense of your base—no, fuc* the base; at the expense of VICTORY. 

I don’t doubt that Obama is a “man of faith” like he claims to be, and that’s fine. But his party? Well, most of us are pretty damn comfortable keeping religion as faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar away from politics and government as possible, thanks very much. Why? Well there are many reasons, but the biggest one is because IT’S THE RIGHT THING TO DO.

So what in the ever-loving hell is he doing? Well it’s perfectly simple: he’s attempting to move to the center to court the swing voters. After all, it worked like magic for Bill Clinton, didn’t it? And, really, for George W. and his “Conservative revolution.” I mean, what is “compassionate Conservatism,” that buzz-phrase from the 2000 election, if not centrist conservatism?

The problem with this is: IT DOESN’T WORK FOR DEMOCRATS.

Have we learned nothing from:

• Al Gore in 2000? (Granted, he actually DID win. But in the end, not by enough of a margin to make a federal court case deciding a thrown election in favor of the bad guy seem too fuc*ing ludicrous to swallow.)
• John Kerry in 2004? Who played so hard to the center and tried so hard to seduce the swingers that he ended up standing for nothing? And got his ass handed to him in November? Because the all-important centrists were duped into a lather about gay marriage, terrorism, and Kerry not being shot at enough in Vietnam?

And the best example of all…

• Hillary Clinton? Whose constant pandering blew up—rather spectacularly—in her face, time and time again? Whose sycophantic eyelash-batting--not to mention crying--at the swing voters served only to make Obama seem all the more genuine?

 WHAT IN THE HELL IS HE DOING?

Arianna Huffington—who's even more rabidly pro-Obama than I am—put it best today in her column “Memo to Obama: Moving to the Middle is for Losers”:

“Fixating on -- and pandering to -- this fickle crowd is all about messaging tailored to avoid offending rather than to inspire and galvanize. And isn't galvanizing the electorate to demand fundamental change the raison d'etre of the Obama campaign in the first place? … Watering down that brand is the political equivalent of New Coke. Call it Obama Zero.” [Emphasis mine]

I couldn’t agree more. It was the fact that Obama stood for something that got him where he is today. Let's just hope that the centrists and undecideds are sufficiently stupid to just, oh you know, NOT NOTICE that he has made a 180.

I’ve been saying since the jump that I supported Obama for two reasons: first—because Hillary was too polarizing to win; but more importantly, secondly—because I had already seen what I considered to be Hillary’s true colors. I knew she was a fraud, all talk, before she ever announced she was running. One cursory look at her war record bore that out. Then her campaign got rolling and she proved it herself, time and time again.

But Obama? Well, he said he was a certain way, and I had no evidence to the contrary. He might, just maybe, turn out to be who he said he was. It was a gamble, but it was a gamble worth taking. Sure, he'd probably end up being just another charlatan like the rest of them. But worst case scenario? He turns out to be a charlatan, he wins, and we end up with a Democratic charlatan in the White House instead of a Bush-legacy Republican charlatan. Good enough.

And it still is--he's still a hell of a lot better than McCain. And sadly, in America, it seems to become more and more hubristic, naive, and pie-in-the-sky to hope for anything better than "good enough." 

But for a moment, it seemed like maybe this time would be different. Maybe we'd get better than "good enough." Maybe we'd get someone that we could really get behind, someone we could actually believe in. Maybe we'd have not just the lesser of two evils, but someone who wasn't all that particularly evil at all. I was really hoping that things would, for once, not be so cynical.

And coming from a cynic like me? That’s saying a lot.

More on Obama's decision here

Friday afternoon politics

Yet ANOTHER Democratic debate last night in Texas between Obama and Clinton. In case you missed it, here's a recap:

It was pretty much the same stuff. Hillary spent an inordinate amount of time bellowing about how stupid Obama's health care plan is and how amazing her health care plan is, continually calling hers "universal health care" because her plan would make it mandatory--hear me? MANDATORY. As in REQUIRED BY LAW--that everyone purchase health insurance. Which, incidentally, is NOT what universal health care means. Universal health care means GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIZED health care that EVERYONE has access to as a SOCIAL PROGRAM. Not forcing people to purchase insurance.

I'm sorry, but this is America, and I'll be goddam*ed if anyone will FORCE me to purchase health insurance. I don't have an extra penny. I'm a freelancer at a blood-sucking entertainment company and the author of a busted, brokedown blog. Please. And if I don't want to purchase health insurance because I can't afford it? Well then I simply won't purchase it, thank you very much. Because that is my RIGHT. As an AMERICAN. I can't even believe people are falling for this. Obama brought up a great point, that a plan similar to Hillary's, carrying a mandate, was introduced in Massachusetts, and so far it's been a bit of a nightmare. Roughly 20% of Mass's population had to petition to the government that they couldn't afford to purchase healthcare, which turned into a further bureaucratic mess of the government determining who could and could not afford health care, fining those who it determined could and just didn't want to, and on and on and on. Read more here, or just do a google search of your own and you'll find plenty of info.

Clinton's solution to all of this? Garnishing wages. Yes, you read that right. The reason I object to this so strongly is because, as state previously, I AM one of those people who will end up having my wages garnished. I am all for universal health care, believe me. But there's a difference between universal health care and government-mandated health INSURANCE. This plan is completely inappropriate and a violation of my rights.

The other big moment of the debate was Clinton's attempt to attack Obama about the Deval Patrick speech plagiarism "scandal." People were with her when she first brought it up--and it's a valid point. Even a foaming at the mouth "Obamacrat" like me will admit that. I don't particularly care--Patrick authorized Obama's use of his comments, so that softens the blow in my eyes--but still, point taken. But when Clinton made a clear ploy to turn the mole hill into a mountain by spinning the issue into a catchphrase, it drew boos from the crowd. Here's a short clip:

The final nail of that particular coffin came today when it was pointed out that Hillary borrowed a few lines herself: from her husband, as well as John Edwards:

In the words of The Daily Kos "Glass houses and all."

Both of those came from the debate's closing remarks, where the candidates answered a question about the toughest moment in their lives and how it effected them. Both gave incredibly candid answers...and they both said basically the same thing: "I've had some tough times in life, and it's inspired me to want to change America." Hillary's was a bit more dramatic and emotional, more warm and fuzzy than Obama's. Many have been saying that it sounded like a concession speech...which I can definitely see, but I think that's more media spin than anything and was probably just a coincidental misstep on Clinton's part. I don't think she's ready to throw the towel in just now. No way.

Here's the clip of both of their answers in their entirety:

I really appreciated their candor--Obama about his "wayward youth" if you will, and Clinton directly referencing all the Lewinsky/Flowers/Jones hullabaloo during her husband's Presidency and using it for a moment of levity. I also thought it was a great moment when she said that she was honored to be there with Obama. I know it's all fake and these two most likely loathe each other, but I appreciate their efforts to respect one another, engineered though it may be. This time around, she bested her opponent's oratorical fireworks.

It's just too bad the ending was lifted from Edwards.

MUPPETS FOR PRESIDENT!!!

Good on ya, whoever voted this week. If you live in Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska or Washington, go vote tomorrow!

But before you go, make sure you make informed choices:

Also, don't be fooled by some candidates' inconsistencies:

Or their outright lies:

The choice is yours, America.

The President said some stuff and the candidates for his replacement have responded

The three Democratic candidates have all issued responses to Bush's dumb clusterfuc* of a speech last night.

Obama filmed his:

If you prefer, a transcript of Obama's is available here.

Hillary's can be read here.

And John Edwards's painfully inept response can be read here.   

Hillary, it's time to rethink things

 

The South Carolina Primary has turned out to be quite an interesting experiment. As you probably know by now, Obama trounced Hillary by an enormous margin. Here are the results by the numbers as reported by CNN:

Obama: 55%
Clinton: 27%
Edwards: 18% (aww. Bless.)

This is the largest victory margin in the race so far. Most of the analysts are saying that the enormous margin is due to roughly half of the SC electorate being black, and thus aligning themselves with the black candidate. This is certainly important information. It of course cannot be viewed as an omen of things to come for Barack in general; however it certainly confirms that the Clintons don't seem to be the black heroes after all.

Perhaps more importantly, this is a vitally poignant indicator of the effectiveness of the Clintons' smear campaign against Obama. If you haven't been following things for the past few weeks, the Clintons have really ramped up their fight, with a nearly constant barrage of criticism, most either irrelevant, cynical, or both. There has been criticism about his war record, which despite its problems, is light-years more honest than Hillary's; Obama's Illinois business dealings (which he successfully debunked in the SC debate); and his comments about Reagan, twisting and de-contextualizing them from being about political method to being about ideology. This is on top of the Clintons' constant efforts to make Bill Clinton look as "black" as possible--the incessant 'Bill Clinton was the first black President' analogies--in the hopes that his legacy with blacks would rub off on his wife.

And therein lies an even bigger issue. Bill Clinton has become ever more visible since the candidates' arrival in SC. It seems like we've been hearing more from him than from his wife, the debate notwithstanding. All the usual suspects--commentators, analysts, etc.--have been intimating that it's starting to become confusing who exactly is running for President here! The NY Times's Katharine Q. Seelye puts it bluntly: "Mr. Clinton may have started this campaign as a mate, but he leaves South Carolina as a running mate." And Obama himself, finally spitting venom right back at Hillary in last week's debate, quipped: "I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes." And during the debate itself, the candidates yelled at each other seemingly incessantly about things Bill Clinton said and did, instead of Hillary. Even after last night's vote, the first person we heard from from the Clinton camp was Bill, not Hillary.

Well, it seems that it has all rather spectacularly backfired. Obama won a landslide victory among blacks, and it seems that South Carolinians have become deeply disenchanted with Hillary's smear campaign of late. It also seems that the Clinton campaign is officially being perceived as the "Billary" campaign. The NY Times's Maureen Dowd, in this morning's column, characterized her as "the feminist icon who is totally dependent on her husband to do the heavy lifting." And Dowd astutely hinted at the shortcomings of the bizarrely Bill-centric Clinton strategy earlier in the week, saying, "It’s odd that the first woman with a shot at becoming president is so openly dependent on her husband to drag her over the finish line." How prescient. South Carolinians at least, it seems, aren't having it.

For not only did Hillary lose the black vote, but it also seems she lost the white male vote as well. Again, this is all based on polling, and I've blogged already about how unreliable that is. (Sidebar: if you're concerned about polling inaccuracy as I am, you can join Arianna Huffington's 'Say No To Pollsters' petition. and read Arianna's outline of polling's problems here.) But it seems that the white male Democratic votes went to John Edwards. It's hard to interpret what, exactly, the lesson is here; there are too many possible nuances. But, at the very least, it can certainly be implied that Hillary isn't seen as an alternative for those white male Dems uncomfortable with voting for a black guy. Not exactly a feather in Obama's hat, but certainly a chink in Hillary's armor.

Again, by no means should this victory be regarded as a bellwether for the country as a whole. There are still too many primaries and too many swing states to go. But it can certainly be regarded as a bellwether for the black vote, which is a vital sector for a Democratic candidate to have in his/her corner.

But one thing is for sure: Hillary's foaming-at-the-mouth bulldog smear strategy is definitely not working, nor is the united "Billary" front.

South Carolina didn't buy it, and I bet the rest of the country won't either.