Campaign ‘08: 99 bottles of tears on the wall
You can only listen to Wolf Blitzer reading from the scoreboard for so long before you come face to face with the absurdity of putting two conservative, sparsely populated rural states at the head of the political line and investing what happens there with epic significance. As John Edwards said, 48 states to go. Now, on to the scores:
- It didn’t really matter that Hillary Clinton won the primary in the end; that was gravy. The story line for the night was written as soon as 15 percent of the results were tallied and it was clear the race would be close. Well before CNN had called the race for her, on-air analysts were trotting out the next cliche down in the drawer, a reprise of Bill’s 1992 “Comeback Kid” shtick. Expect to hear it ad nauseam for the foreseeable future; as of early this morning, the string “Hillary Comeback-Kid” returns over 1800 results at Google News.
- It’s impossible to know how big a role Hillary’s already famous crying scene in New Hampshire (video at the Mole yesterday) played in her victory. More likely the Reuters/Zogby poll from Monday showing Obama with a 13-point lead was simply very bad data. But Clinton’s tears will become a vital part of her Comeback Kid mythology. And if you believe for a minute that the pros and cons of that spontaneous breakdown were not rehearsed in minute detail with advisers before the waterworks were let loose, then you and I differ in our judgments of how Hillary Clinton is wired. They would have focus-grouped her crying spell in advance if they had had time.
- Obama gave a fine rendition of his stump speech last night, better than the one he delivered in Des Moines after he’d actually won. But all those invocations of “change” unhinged from any specific political referents will only grate more over time. Sam Smith, a veteran DC indie journalist and editor of the Progressive Review, wrote a great sketch of Obama back in May of 2007: “The… problem is that hope is not audacious at all. Audacious would be doing something now, audacious would be taking a personal political risk because the country needs it, audacious would be saying something unconventional because the conventional is killing us. Audacity is not turning one’s back on present needs and praying that the future will straighten it all out. One of the best kept secrets in America today is the extent to which hope and faith are being used as seedy substitutes for action and reason. Too often, hope is a form of postponement and faith a substitute for action or facing the truth.” (Read the post.)
6 Responses to “Campaign ‘08: 99 bottles of tears on the wall”
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Audacious would be single payer health care with a elimination of the profit motive instead of forcing the citizens to pay the Insurance Company for health care. Cutting out the middle man would be audacious.
Yes, the American people need to be warned about, and then be given a real choice to fight against, the global corporatist Empire which is hiding behind this façade of ‘Vichy American’ government.
This is the only thing that would represent real ‘change’, instead of the overused and undefined ‘change’ happy-talk that is currently being vacuously mouthed by all the little corporatist candidates.
I firmly believe that the best indicator, the best signal, the best ‘litmus test’, if you will, for any real, honest, and enlightened candidate who would claim to lead the people out of this forest of disaster that we are facing and lead them to confront and overcome the non-democratic opposition that we are facing, is for a candidate to commit, clearly identify, and specify that instead of the vacuous ‘change’ that is being senselessly bantered by all others, that he/she would level with the American people that the singular source of all their trauma is clearly and coherently named global corporatist Empire, and that they need to recognize, commit and fight to overthrow this unitive opponent of their society.
I have long advocated and written that:
“The very most important question that the American people should be asking any candidate for president in ‘08 is not, “Where do you stand on the war?”, but, “Where do you stand on the EMPIRE that has taken over our country — an Empire of which the war in Iraq and domestic economic oppression are only its biggest and most visible crimes —- so far”.
Any serious candidate, or organization, that would clearly lead the fight against social oppression, class oppression, economic oppression, imperialist wars, growing tyranny, and the host of ills singularly caused by empire must be willing to call our common oppressor by its real name.
Naturally, I agree that none of the corporatist empire’s vetted candidates will be willing to do so —- but they must be challenged to do so for the people’s sake in clearly seeing our common need.
We need a democratic machinery to make elections more meaningful. If you want Obama or Edwards to take more risks or any other candidate, then they need to be presented with a visible constituency that supports such risk taking and is conscious of the rhetoric that they would engage in. I have tried to explain the process of how this could occur: “After Iowa and New Hampshire…”
“Too often, hope is a form of postponement and faith a substitute for action or facing the truth.”
You are so right! That’s really what’s helping to bring the country down. Most people don’t want to deal with the facts — or don’t know enough about what’s going on to deal. The latter situation is largely the fault of the supine media. So there’s plenty of blame to go around. Problem is how to institute real change in a country that is both too comfortable and too scared to desire it.
Seems worth noting that, given this móbius strip of vacuum that is professional political rhetoric these days, we are given no choice but to vote the go-ahead for all the illegality and the, recently, former illegalities of the present administration since no one’s talking about reversing that much less prosecuting it. Makes ya feel like a congressperson. Maybe it’s not a vacuum, maybe it’s how sleaze runneth over.
Of what worth is change, when change means more of the same?