This column needs to begin with an apology to the Secretary of State. Hillary, the primary reason I was unable to support you last year was my belief that your presidency would become mired in the same irrational Republican hatred that hobbled, then crippled your husband’s tenure. I was certain that, between the two of you, only Barack Obama could tame the rabid beast, by virtue of the generational shift he represented and the fact that his last name (however exotic) is not Clinton. I also believed, I freely admit, that his detractors would sense the need to tone down their belligerence and behave with more civility in order to avoid the stench of racism.
Whoops!
As if we needed any more evidence, the events of the last several days leave no question that the Republican Party has removed itself from the mainstream of political discourse. It doesn’t matter who the president is – Obama, or Hillary, or Jesus Christ himself (whom we all know would be backing single-payer). The small minority of Americans who still call themselves Republicans (hovering around 25 percent) have driven into insanity’s ditch, and are spinning their wheels furiously … not to pull themselves out, but to dig in deeper. The orchestrated assaults on town-hall meetings across the nation this week do not – cannot – reflect the GOP as a whole, but they’ve showcased the party’s public face: a tiny, frightened (and frightening) group of people, bought and paid for by special interests, who are hellbent on stifling the nation’s policy debate by hijacking the get-togethers with vicious invective and then shouting down any attempts to move intelligently past their outbursts.
Two weeks ago, when President Obama was asked why he was pushing Congress to finish its work on healthcare legislation before the August recess, he benignly noted that “if there are no deadlines, nothing gets done in this town.” Four days after that recess began for House members, anyone who wasn’t already clued in now knows the real reason his deadline was so important to the Democrats (and why extending it was so important to Republicans like Michael “Slow down, Mr. President” Steele). Obama and Steele both knew that once the congressmen’s planes left Washington, they’d be flying straight into a shitstorm of well-organized lunatics desperate to see them, and Obama himself, fail. (more…)
I couldn’t agree more with that analysis, but I would take it a step further: Obama must also take great care to ensure that we don’t forget his poet’s heart. Americans face tough times over the next few years, despite our newfound optimism in the wake of Obama’s election; chances are pretty good that, no matter what new policies he implements after his inauguration, our downward economic spiral will continue well into his term. Chances are excellent, meanwhile, that as Obama chooses his battles and launches his new initiatives, critics on the left will ask why he’s not doing even more, while critics on the right will simply dismiss everything he’s doing as pointless and misguided (if not Socialist and anti-American).
Ted: I gotta say, he looks like a Vulcan … who’s also a motivational speaker (if that’s possible). (Pause) He is a Vulcan! His speech is called “The Race for the Future,” and we all know that in the future Zefram Cochrane develops the first Warp engine and the Vulcans are there after the first launch. I think Mark has been sent back in time by the Vulcans to push humanity toward the Star Trek future.
Jon: Well, I dunno … Warner’s got rounded ears. It’s been a looooong time since I could make a Star Trek reference, so I’m just gonna stick with “space alien.” You can get as specific as you like. I still think Warner will be president in 2016. Did you see those daughters of his? They look like future first-daughter material.
It’s the end of the road for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. A few signs lately have pointed towards Hillary finally packing it in, and after Barack Obama sweeps up enough of the black vote in the urban strongholds of Montana and South Dakota today to claim victory in these final two primary states, it’s likely that Clinton’s campaign will offer a formal concession. Hillary’s last-ditch effort to convince the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee to seat Michigan and Florida’s entire slates of delegates with full voting status (and award all of said delegates to her) failed, and her pitch to undecided superdelegates over the last month has mostly been falling on deaf ears. By the end, her surrogates’ statements about the which states “mattered” and specific, irrelevant ways the popular vote could be tallied to produce a slim lead for Hillary were beginning to insult everyone’s intelligence.
With gracious assists from the national media and Obama himself, Hillary has raised two key questions about Obama that voters weren’t asking themselves as they fawned over his January speeches: Who is this guy? and Can we trust him? Implicit in these questions is the assumption that voters already know everything they need to know about Hillary, and have already decided whether they trust her or not. (In this she is, however unintentionally, parroting George Bush’s 2004 line, “You may not always agree with me, but at least you know where I stand.”) She has effectively re-positioned Obama as The Unknown Quantity – or, as the survivors of Oceanic 815 would put it, as The Other.
I knew I wasn’t voting Republican, that much was certain. No offense to our Republican readers, but eight years is enough. I am not better off than I was in 2000. John McCain is too busy being a war tactician. Mitt Romney personifies meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Rudolph Giuliani marginalized himself way too early as the 9/11 Mayor, insinuating a vote against him was a vote for American girls in burqas, American boys conscripted into jihad and death to the rest. Ron Paul presented some very good ideas and a visionary sense of Constitution-first governance… meaning he hadn’t a snowman’s Sunday in hell. Call that glib, but thus far he has been the poster child for un-electability.