The past couple of days have been a flood of analogies, metaphors and other devices that neither fully express my frustration, not illustrate the situation with the Presidential race as I see it.
The Republicans spent the last week pulling every old tired rabbit out of their hat; liberal media, tax and spend, family values, you name it. From my perspective it was a truly pathetic display of desperation.
During that time, the Obama camp opened, and closed, and opened it’s war room, which got absolutely NO PLAY in the national media. I don’t want to fall into that category of the Chicken Little, but the response has been flaccid to say the least.
This is a “fool me twice” election in my mind, except it’s the third time. In the past 8 years we’ve fallen victim to jingoism, deception, criminal partisanship, and a litany of other abuses of power that I just don’t have the time or the inclination to get into.
Both candidates have taken on the mantle of change, McCain more recently than Obama.
Obama has chosen to refuse money from lobbyists, has held back supportive 527’s, much to the disappointment of many on the left, and generally run a transparent campaign…more than would normally be expected anyway. Honestly, it’s been a pretty clean campaign on his side of the fence, and I don’t just say that because I support him, I don’t think you can find a successful national candidate in the modern age that has as little financial support from K street as Barack Obama. Please try and prove me wrong.
On the other hand, McCain is taking money from anyone who will write him a check and some who didn’t. 527’s are a big part of his campaign, even though they can’t officially coordinate. Seriously? McCain’s brand of change is like wiping the poop out of the diaper then re-applying it to the baby…Good as new!
It’s time to start a fight.
The harsh reality is that we don’t live in a fact-based world. We live in a world where empty rhetoric and prejudicial buzzwords drive the emotions of the electorate at large and color their decision making process. After 1992, with Clinton’s brilliant question, “Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?” political rhetoric has shifted from some semblance of reality to a fantasyland of bull. Right now, the McCain campaign is engaged in smokescreening the “average” guys and gals of this nation with a story that has been both oft told and successful. Truly, it is the clarion call of our time, “Government wants to take your money, liberty, hot button issues of the time, etc.”
It’s garbage. It’s been crap, it will always be crap, and the Obama campaign should call it what it is, crap.
If Obama really wants to strike a chord he’s got to get out of the fact-based world and to the world of emotion, not a World of Magic. Americans don’t want aloof leaders we want passionate leaders. If they’re bozos, so be it. If they’re not, it’s a bonus. Show some passion Obama, like not that crazy passion, but the kind that makes us remember just how boring McCain is. Or vote for this kitten.
One more thing, don’t remind us that we’re stupid. We’re dumb as a pallet of bricks on the bottom of the ocean with a stack of 1040 forms on top. They don’t think we’re stupid, they know we are.
How about calling them stupid? That works for me. That’s a change that we can all believe in.