Barack Obama – Page 34

Bruce hearts Obama

Springsteen is going to get some flack for this — he is endorsing Barack Obama for president. This is unfair, of course. First, endorsements like this have little real impact and, second, Springsteen fans shouldn’t hold the Boss to a different standard than almost any other performer. (I wrote an essay on this a while back that I’ll get up on my home

Consider: Springsteen endorses Kerry in 2004 and a mini-hailstorm breaks out over it. Brooks and Dunn appear in support of President Bush at the Republican National Convention the same year — not a word. And what of Chuck Norris and his eery presence standing behind Mike Huckabee?

In any case, Bruce offers his endorsement in a letter on his Web site:

LIke most of you, I’ve been following the campaign and I have now seen and heard enough to know where I stand. Senator Obama, in my view, is head and shoulders above the rest.

He has the depth, the reflectiveness, and the resilience to be our next President. He speaks to the America I’ve envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that’s interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where “…nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone.”

At the moment, critics have tried to diminish Senator Obama through the exaggeration of certain of his comments and relationships. While these matters are worthy of some discussion, they have been ripped out of the context and fabric of the man’s life and vision, so well described in his excellent book, Dreams From My Father, often in order to distract us from discussing the real issues: war and peace, the fight for economic and racial justice, reaffirming our Constitution, and the protection and enhancement of our environment.

After the terrible damage done over the past eight years, a great American reclamation project needs to be undertaken. I believe that Senator Obama is the best candidate to lead that project and to lead us into the 21st Century with a renewed sense of moral purpose and of ourselves as Americans.

Over here on E Street, we’re proud to support Obama for President.

In the end, no one should be surprised by this.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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Elitist tautologies

This thing just won’t go away. The press — with a great big assist from Hillary Clinton — seem intent on keeping this so-called “bittergate” controversy in front of the voters faces, regardless of whether the voters have any interest in it at all.

Not that there haven’t been some good pieces written about it. The almost-always enlightening EJ Dionne Jr. outlines a Democratic strategy that seems interested only in keeping the White House in GOP hands. Bob Herbert also offers an interesting take.

The silliest piece of twaddle comes courtesy of a former GOP speechwriter, that bow-tied eminence George Will. Will follows the old GOP script, one that Dionne had deconstructed in his piece, suffering in the process from a logical tautology that may work well on cable television but that someone with a reputation for intellectual rigor (an undeserved one, I believe) should know better to make.

Will reads his own bias into Obama’s comments, playing off Herbert’s observation that Obama had taken his eye off the ball. Herbert writes:

One of Mr. Obama’s strongest points early in this campaign was his capacity to make people feel good about their country again. If I were him, I’d try to re-ignite that flame.

During his victory speech after the Iowa caucuses, he told a tumultuously cheering crowd: “They said this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose.”

Mr. Obama needs to get back on that message of unity and hope, appealing to the better angels of the working classes, while at the same time fashioning an economic message more compelling than what we’ve heard to date.

The various groups, ethnic and otherwise, are not interested in being characterized. They’re interested in being led.

This is true, as was the critique offered by Obama of an economy that has been off track for workers — especially those in small towns — through too many presidential administrations.

But Will uses this change in tone — Obama’s slipping from the role of leader to the role of critic — and ties it to a version of liberalism that bears only a nominal resemblance to what most liberal Democrats have been saying and proposing.

Will — quoting an outdated sociological tract — calls Obama the “‘prototype of the liberal Democrat who would judge ordinary Americans by an abstract standard and find them wanting.'”

Will accuses Obama of being dismissive.

Obama’s dismissal is: Americans, especially working-class conservatives, are unable, because of their false consciousness, to deconstruct their social context and embrace the liberal program.

That, of course, is not what he said. His point was not to dismiss the working-class, but to explain the anger that many feel at being left behind and ignored during the Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush administrations.

Will’s column doesn’t acknowledge the rest of the Obama speech — the criticism of past presidents and politicians — and purposely misreads Obama by stripping his comment of context. It is no different than what Hillary Clinton and John McCain have done, but Will offers his commentary in the form of analysis, painting a disingenuous attack with a thin veneer of psuedo-intellectual pap and quotations from long-forgotten political science books.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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With friends like these

Joe Lieberman apparently is no friend of Barack Obama. According to this post at Think Progress, Sen. Lieberman offer this response to a radio announcer’s question:

I know him now for a little more than three years since he came into the Senate and he’s obviously very smart and he’s a good guy. I will tell ya that during this campaign, I’ve learned some things about him, about the kind of environment from which he came ideologically. And I wouldn’t…I’d hesitate to say he’s a Marxist, but he’s got some positions that are far to the left of me and I think mainstream America.

Think Obama wishes he could take back his 2006 endorsement of Lieberman, when the former Democrat was knocked off in the primary? All’s fair, I guess.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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When a nonstory becomes the story

It’s the inflation of these kinds of minor gaffs getting blown into massive controversies that makes me crazy and demonstrates just how badly the major media outlets are failing us in their coverage of elections.

Even Countdown with Keith Olbermann, which I watch almost religiously, tagged this out-of-context comment and subsequent responses as breaking news — mindboggling when you consider that there was no news involved. (Though CNN — above — hit the story hard and accurately, dismissing it for what it is.)

I think this posting on Daily Kos — made without comment — sums up what’s wrong here (the above video of Obama’s response comes from Kos and is a powerful rebuke to both Clinton and McCain’s criticism and should put this nonsense to rest).

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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Double standard on race and Wright

David Sirota offers a tight analysis of the Rev. Wright controversy, explaining the double standard that keeps this story bubbling at the surface of this campaign.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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