Discuss “Presidential Perspectives”

1. REX
Mar 10, 2008 at 03:24 AM

Close your eyes and imagine your vote is equal to one million dollars. Now, imagine Barack Obama is an investment: what are you really getting for your money if you vote for Barack Obama? One way to answer that is to ask “what did Illinois voters get for their investment when he rode an at least partially rigged election (vs. stooge Alan Keyes) into the U.S. Senate?” In return for their votes, he’s spent more of his time running for president than he’s spent being a senator. Whatever he promised Illinois when they put him in the U.S. Senate, they got something else. Whose interests does he therefore represent? The people of Illinois? Or his own? What evidence is there that yours, mine, or anyone’s concerns affect him in the slightest? Imagine you were Barack Obama - what compels a Jr. Senator from Illinois at this time, in this season, to abandon all dedication to his newly won seat in the senate and run for president? You and me? What proof is there of that? Barack Obama picked a fight about NAFTA in Ohio and said flat out during the Feb 26 debate “I will suspend NAFTA [if they don’t agree to renegotiate]”. What does it tell you about a person now that we’ve learned his campaign secretly assured the Canadian government that everything he said was mere posturing, political (quote) “rhetoric” - what does that say about who he cares about? What does that say about what he really means? He outspent Clinton 4 to 1 in Ohio - still the voters said “get lost”. The touted phrase “just words” has taken a whole new meaning all its own. One thing indicates another, as the saying goes. In other words “rhetoric” begets rhetoric: promises beget promises, wishes beget wishes, (and fairy tales as well) but as they also say, “if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
This nation has suffered a lot these last eight years but we need more than just a smooth talking pied piper to wish away our problems. We need a worker not a player - can Barack Obama work? If so, I haven’t seen it. We need a doer not a talker - I wonder exactly what else besides “just words” he’s ready to bring to the table? We need someone who cares about this country, its people, and our futures - does anybody get that impression about him? I certainly do not. If I was Barack Obama I’d have more than just a promise: I’d have proof of what I’m willing to do for the people of this country. If I was someone who could really run for president, there’d be no one you could talk to who wouldn’t tell you I spent my life working for the benefit of other people - that right or wrong I always tried and never gave up on making people’s lives better. They would say I spoke for those who didn’t have a voice and fought for those who couldn’t fight for themselves, if I were such a person - and I’m not. Barack Obama is not that person either: he wants you to work for him, to speak for him, to do his fighting for him, - for what? What do you get for your investment? What do your kids get, what does your family get, what do your parents and grandparents get in the twilight of their lives? Barack Obama wants to know what his country can do for him - but what has he done for his country? Can we live on speeches?
He shows up smiling like an actor, spoofing the great speeches of our time, enthralling like a rock star or a cult personality. It’s an easy message: “I’m not George Bush”. The crowd cheers. You’re against the war, he’s against the war; you’re worried about the economy, he says he is too; you say that you need health care, well he agrees with you. Say you want more jobs, he’ll promise to find some; and he will smile and wink and shake your hand and grin all the way out the door. Once he’s got your vote the money cloud descends as it has already from Wisconsin to Ohio, Texas, Vermont and Rhode Island, and now to Pennsylvania, and then to North Carolina.

He’s not a tough talker but he plays one on TV. TV-Obama says, “I will (flat out) suspend NAFTA,” whereas real-life Obama advisors tell Canadian officials it’s just “political rhetoric”. The Canadian govt. memo is real - an eye-witness report no less. His pledge therefore was fake. (( Real Memo = Fake Pledge.)) Tough-talking business is not the kind of business Obama conducts. Safe, easy business is the kind he likes. If he were on a menu he would not be steak and potatoes he would be the dinner mints. If you live in Pennsylvania, he’s got a lot more pledges for you. Promise this, promise that, he’ll promise you the wind; he’s got the time, he’s got the money, he will be on TV and the radio, with prominent endorsees like nobody’s-candidate John Kerry and Ted (wish-I-coulda) Kennedy, but none of that will serve to make an empty suit less hollow. I really think that a “ticket to ride” is all he is to them - a means to an end, ending with the White House, if they can contrive it. Do you know that subtracting Republicans and Independents from all these Democratic primaries would end his nomination bid? Like Wisconsin Feb 19 - only 27% of Wisconsin’s voters were actually Democrats that voted for Obama (31% for Clinton). Almost 160K of the record 1.1 million WI record turnout were Republicans (3-1 Obama) - about 308,000 were Independents (3-1 Obama). That’s why he lost Ohio so drastically - not so many Republicans or Independents. What Pennsylvania is going to show is that Obama can’t win without conservatives; he can’t win without Independents; without “band-camp” style caucuses, he can’t win with Democrats. I’m starting to wonder if he’ll end up on John McCain’s ticket if he doesn’t win the nomination (joking). But I also wouldn’t be surprised.
What I’m saying Pennsylvania, is that you’ve got the chance to end the shindig the Republicans and rightwing Independents have used to trample all over our primaries: in Obama we don’t have the Democrats’ front running nominee, we have the front runner that Non-Democrats have decided in contest after contest to throw our party out the window. The Democrats have stuck by Senator Clinton for a reason: she’s a Democrat. Texas had open primaries, WI had open primaries, Ohio had semi-open primaries: it’s the Non-Democrats who have kept him in the race at all. Here in Pennsylvania, we can take our party back! He can’t win without conservatives so why not get him out now? 8 years could be a long time to wait, with all that we don’t know. I say let him earn that senate chair and earn the votes he seeks, let him come back next time with proof instead of promises, not asking what his country can do for him, but what he can do for his county. By “get him out now”, I mean that Obama getting ZERO percent of the vote will end the right wing’s drive to choose our nominee for us (look back and you will see the more Republicans voted Dem, the more Obama won). ZERO Delegates in Pennsylvania is what I recommend for Obama. Either he gets ZIP, or it might turn out we’ve suffered 8 long years of Bush to end up with nothing to show for all of it besides this audacious empty suit.