Wow...

[missroserose]

It really seems like everything I read about Barack Obama makes me like him more and more. (And here I've been halfway avoiding reading stuff about him for fear that I'll find the seemingly-inevitable rotten core that every politician tries to hide.) But absolutely everything about him seems to be open and genuine.

...I can has hope for our country? Really?

Comments

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

I've been resistant, from the very beginning, if only because I remember the wheels coming off the Howard Dean train with a mighty YEEAAARGH, and Bill Bradley getting boxed out in favor of the incumbent veep. I didn't want to have yet another promising candidate Fireflied away by "the party's choice" who the big money gets behind but nobody seems to want as their actual leader.

Everything I've seen about Obama seems refreshing -- genuine global view, consensus-builder, approaches authority as a responsibility instead of an right. When he says he wants to serve, I believe him.

Of course, I could be deluding myself, too. And I don't have much hope for him after Tuesday, because I think the 2008 Inevitability Express has already been moving too fast for too long. Dammit.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Amen. But there is one thing we can do - which is, go out and vote on Tuesday. Which I fully intend on doing, even if it does mean registering as a Democrat.

I want to spend the next four to eight years *not* being upset every time the national news comes on, dammit.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Which I fully intend on doing, even if it does mean registering as a Democrat.

We're in such red states that it typically doesn't matter how we vote, does it? Tuesday might be the only time in our lives it actually counts. (If then, but let's not get hyper-cynical.)

I've been frustrated enough with the legislature these last two years (have you seen the cartoon where all the donkeys are cowering in fear, asking, "What IS that?" when confronted with a spine?) that I've all but disowned the Dems and am seriously considering going permanently independent if they nominate the wrong person (again).

And yeah, my reaction when I see the news is that resigned but inevitable disappointment, like when you drag a cocker spaniel on stage and expect him to be able to play Mozart's Requiem on the piano. No, of course it's not going to work, but you at least hope for someone with a finger or two.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Alaska is an incredibly red state - IIRC, our electoral votes have been blue *once* - for JFK. (Who is the trendy comparison point for Obama these days, but his super-liberal record combined with his anti-gun policies make me doubt that we'll see a repeat this time around, even if he does get the nomination.)

Great cartoon, and sadly true. The equivalent I've seen has been bumper stickers saying "I neutered my cat - Now He's A Democrat." Sad, but so very true. (There was actually a Doonesbury comic a couple years back that I thought summed up the situation nicely...I'll have to dig it up off my old computer.)

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Well, Kansas is almost as red as they get -- we did give rise to Sam "Makes Huckabee Look Like a Kennedy" Brownback, after all, and we typically side with the Republican presidential candidate -- but state Democrats have been able to exploit the growing polarization between the extremes in the Republican party, so now we've got a few state posts (governor, lieutenant governor, att'y general) held by Dems, as well as Jim "Vote For Me Because I Run Fast" Ryun getting knocked off by perennial loser Nancy Boyda in the how-in-the-HELL result of the 2006 election. It looks better than it really is down here. Ah feel yuir pain.

And if Obama does win the nomination, it's just a matter of time before the character assassination machine warms up and hammers his image down. The only question is to what degree the right-wing water-carriers will allow themselves to be nakedly racist. I don't have high hopes. (If Hillary wins, well, their work already has a foundation.)

The good news is I work with some of the Dem county bigwigs, and I can get some leverage in the caucus if I want. Of course, if I'm feeling particularly cranky -- and right now, I am -- I'll go knowing I'm still suffering from dëthflü and just...mingle a lot. Nothing brings out my social skills like contagion.

Oh, and I founds it. Though there are a few other choice ones in that gallery....

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Character-assassination or assassination-assassination. I mean, in all frankness, he's black, he's charismatic, he's young and good-looking, and (scariest of all) he's in earnest about wanting to change things (as opposed to just talking about it as a way to earn votes). I seem to remember reading that he's already had to have his Secret Service protection doubled a couple of times due to death threats - if he wins the presidency and manages to get through the first year with fewer than three assassination attempts, I'm going to be very surprised. (Hopefully none will be successful - I've both read and heard that the Secret Service is one of the least politically-charged organizations in existence, and thanks to 9/11 I'm sure it's much harder to get a shot at the President than it was in JFK's day. But I'm certain more than one person will try.)

Brian is actually almost hoping that one of the Southern neocons does bring up the "But, he's a nigger, ain't he?" argument, just because the fallout will be so very beautiful to watch. (On an only vaguely related but amusing note, I love how in Chris Rock's SNL take on the subject (http://obama08.magnify.net/item/85HCZB4TW3DBJ895)=, he almost says "nigger president" three-quarters of the way through. You can just see his brain going "National television! Reverse! REVERSE!"

(Brian brings up another cogent point: "How is it that a black man on national TV can't say the word "nigger", but a corpulent white guy named Bill O'Reilly can say just about everything but (http://mediamatters.org/foxandrace/)?")

As for character assassination, I like to think it's going to be somewhat tougher for them to run the hype machine against Obama, simply because he's so incredibly aboveboard and genuine about everything. Admittedly, his hardcore liberal record gives them plenty of ammunition (and after the Swift Boat debacle I know they're not above making shit up), but he can deflect that by simply pointing out (once again) that this is the same kind of politics that's made Washington so bitterly partisan today, and that we need to transcend and replace with mutual respect. It'll take some good spinning, but I think he's charismatic enough to pull it off.

Yes, I'm being optimistic. So sue me.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

It does help that Obama does have the sum charisma of the last 12 years of presidential candidates combined, doesn't it? I think he can make a great case, appealing to the better part of people, but the character-assassins will play to fear and hate, and that's an awful lot of leverage.

I fear the neocon dropping the n-bomb, again for the same reason. I've seen and heard things from people I otherwise respect that just floor me on the subject of race, and it baffles me that we pride ourselves in having come so far in the last two generations and really I'm not sure we're not just running in place. (Or, as Dennis Miller put it before he lost his tiny mind, forty years ago we were South Africa without the diamond mines.) People like O'Reilly keep this hatred festering and simmering, and the entire right encourages fear of some sort -- of the Muslims, of the liberals, of the hippies, whoever, just as long as they're afraid. About the only thing I'll say for O'Reilly is that he never lets being wrong stand in his way.

And that's another great thing about Obama -- he's unafraid. Of course he's in danger, being a viable black presidential candidate with an agenda for change. This is the only thing that worries me -- so far he does sound too often like the portrait of the martyr as a young man, so refined is his rhetoric about "us" and "we" instead of "I" and "me," and I this country is approaching enough of a point of fragility that an assassination might be catastrophic in terms of not just the electoral process but the perception of the country as a genuine democracy.

That said, for everything else wrong in Washington, I'm glad Obama has the USSS on his side. There's just not a better protective force in the world, and nobody I'd rather have watching the people important to me. I just hope they don't have much to do.

[(Anonymous)]

I just love that someone would use Firefly as a verb. To a small group of people, you have precisely, poetically described the behind-the-scenes torpedoing of a superior product.