John McCain has skillfully maneuvered Barack Obama into a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” position smack dab in the middle of a rock and a hard place. No matter what you think of the merits of McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign and return to work, ostensibly to lend his “expertise” to the effort to fix the country’s current economic problems, at least it’s bold and decisive action that forces Obama to respond in kind; boldly and decisively. So far, though, he’s just been wimpy.
CNN reports that while Obama has been making speeches:
“It’s my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person will be the next president,” Obama said in Clearwater, Florida. “It is going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once. It’s more important than ever to present ourselves to the American people.”
John McCain has been, well, doing stuff:
Announcing his decision to suspend his campaign, McCain said, “I am calling on the president to convene a meeting with the leadership from both houses of Congress, including Sen. Obama and myself. It is time for both parties to come together to solve this problem.”
snip
Salter also said McCain called President Bush and talked to colleagues in Washington and learned that passage of the bailout plan was next to impossible.
McCain’s campaign also said that he had canceled his appearance on “The Late Show with David Letterman” on Wednesday night.
Now, given that Obama “suspended” his campaign, canceled his “Saturday Night Live” appearance and went home due to Hurricane Ike, he can’t very well stand on principle here. Besides, McCain’s call to Bush worked. An AP-Yahoo News headline screams so:
Bush invites McCain, Obama to White House meeting
With extraordinary stakes on the line, President Bush invited both men vying to succeed him and key congressional leaders to a White House meeting to hammer out a massive financial rescue plan. The president also was appealing directly to Americans in a prime-time address Wednesday to help push his tough-sell bailout into reality.
snip
So, not long before his planned 12-minute address to the nation from the grand East Room, Bush took the unusual step of calling Democrat Barack Obama to invite him to the White House for the meeting on Thursday, said presidential spokeswoman Dana Perino. The White House said the presidential invitation was also extended to Republican John McCain and to Republican and Democratic leaders from Capitol Hill.
So, on a day when all the stars were supposed to be lined up in his favor, Obama finds himself playing defense after being slapped upside the head with the unwelcome news that poll lead, or no poll lead, he is not yet president and still has a day job that requires his attention. And, darn it to heck, he can’t even blame the messenger.
Who’s “playing politics” with the bailout? Depends on who you ask. Republican presidential nominee, John McCain has suspended his campaign and asked Democratic rival Barack Obama, to join him and postpone Friday’s debate. Obama says, no way. According to AP News:
NEW YORK – Republican John McCain said Wednesday that he wants to postpone Friday’s debate to deal with the nation’s financial problems, but Democrat Barack Obama said “it’s more important than ever” that the country hear from its next president.
McCain says that putting politics aside, the need to address the economic crisis requires both candidates to rise above partisanship, and get back to doing the work they were already elected to do:
“It has become clear that no consensus has developed to support the administration’s proposal,” McCain said. “I do not believe that the plan on the table will pass as it currently stands, and we are running out of time.”
Obama was quick to point out however, that working together to “issue a statement” was his idea:
Obama repeatedly stressed at his news conference that he called McCain first to propose that they issue a joint statement in support of a package to help fix the economy as soon as possible. He said McCain called back several hours later, as Obama was leaving a rally in Florida, and agreed to the idea of a statement but also said he wanted to postpone the debate and hold joint meetings in Washington.
Obama said he suggested they first issue a joint statement showing bipartisanship.
“When I got back to the hotel, he had gone on television to announce what he was going to do,” Obama said.
Whether you believe, as some do, that McCain, reacting to increasingly bad poll numbers, is looking to jumpstart his favorabilty by trying to appear decisive and presidential, or that Obama, the heretofore reluctant debater, is showing strength by pressing on and claiming that the debate schedule must be adhered to, since the people need to hear from the candidates and presidents need to be able to multitask, one thing is clear; even in unusual times, we get politics as usual.
My take?
Seems to me, while enjoying his Walter Mitty-ish visions of press conferences-to-come praising him for “reaching across the aisle” to his politically wounded opponent, in an effort to jointly reassure Americans worried about the economy that he and his rival were “above politics,” Barack Obama got “politicked.” In fact, he got blindsided in plain sight. Like a sadistic little schoolyard bully sucker-punching a kid in a wheelchair, only to get his ass karate-kicked by a better-prepared-than-expected “victim,” Obama got played.
What he does next will say a lot about who he really is.
Clarence Page has an article about the “Bubba vote” that’s just sad. But then, most of Mr. Page’s articles are, nowadays. See, as a black journalist naturally seeking mainstream validation, Page and others, like Eugene Robinson and Bob Herbert, don’t even realize they’re being pimped out on behalf of Massah’s newest HNIC, “obasee-uh” appointee, Barack Obama, and thus, they happily acquiesce to the not-so-subtle beseechments of Camp O and “Call out the Toms and Bubbas fuh ya, suh, yessuh!”
In today’s Chicago Tribune article, Page hones in on “the Bubba vote”:
What’s Barack Obama’s biggest remaining obstacle on his road to the White House? A nationally prominent Republican sums it up in a word: “Bubba.”
“The Bubba vote is there, and it’s very real, and it is everywhere,” former House Majority Leader Dick Armey recently said. “There’s an awful lot of people in America, bless their heart, who simply are not emotionally prepared to vote for a black man.”
Using homespun comparisons of black vs. white “Bubba” definitions, Page contorts himself into a pretzel tying the “Bradley effect” to the “Bubba factor” using the recent AP/Yahoo News poll as justification for his concerns about the potential for “race-based voting to derail Obama’s presidential hopes. Just another “objective” look at America’s bias against black folks, as defined by the astroturfing Axelrod-influenced media.
However, we’ve moved beyond mere “astroturfing,” defined as manufacturing fake grassroots support to give the illusion of real grassroots support. When combined with the DeaNC, 50 state strategy and the Donna Brazile adaptation of Karl Rove “ratfucking” tactics, we now enjoy the benefits of Democratic party sanctioned “astrofucking,” or winning dirty by any means necessary. Howard Dean has backed Obama since 2004 when his Democracy For America tapped him as one of Dean’s Dozen, and Obama’s adaptation of Dean’s 50-state theory has provided a vehicle for Howard’s quest for vengeance. That Dean saw his presidential bid’s derailment as the fault of the centrist, Clintonian, Democratic Leadership Council wing of the party is no secret. An opportunity for revenge had to be too tempting for the mad political scientist to pass up.
Brazile’s long-term friendship with Karl Rove is likewise, no secret, and she also expressed an affinity for tapping into the “Obama factor” years ago. Though no friend of Howard Dean, their common desire to remake the Democratic party forges an uneasy alliance. Like Dean, Brazile has conducted her undercover sabotage in plain sight, feigning neutrality when any blind fool could see otherwise. Her actions throughout the primaries speak for themselves, as DeaNC Voting Rights Chair and race-baiting spokeswoman on CNN, Donna has maneuvered and manipulated opinion in a number of instances, and her Florida/Michigan, Rules and Bylaws Committee machinations unfairly altered the outcome of the primary contest by giving Camp O opportunities to exploit.
The above-referenced AP/Yahoo News poll was conducted by Knowledge Networks, a company founded in 1998 by two Stanford professors, whose press release page reads like an Obama supporter’s wet dream-come-true. A sample of the polls done between April ‘08 and the present shows an Obama dominance in focus:
09/23/08
Obama struggling to win over Clinton voters – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
09/22/08
Poll shows gap between blacks and whites over racial discrimination – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
09/20/08
Racial views steer some white Dems away from Obama – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
09/19/08
People prefer Obama over McCain as teacher – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
09/19/08
Obama tops McCain as football-watching buddy – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
07/18/08
Poll: McCain’s backers less fired up than Obama’s – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
07/08/08
Poll: Pet owners prefer McCain over Obama – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
07/07/08
Old Guy Vs Change: McCain, Obama Images Take Shape – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
07/03/08
The ‘mushy middle’ hard to reach for Obama, McCain – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
07/03/08
A look at the political center – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
07/02/08
Obama would get more barbecue invitations than McCain – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
07/02/08
Poll: Public cool to Michelle, doesn’t know Cindy – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
06/30/08
9 in 10 see rising gas prices causing family hardship – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
06/26/08
Obama Winning Over Former Clinton Supporters – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
04/21/08
Economy the top worry, but barely affecting votes – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
04/18/08
Ongoing nomination fight hurting Clinton more than Obama – The Associated Press | Yahoo! News Poll
Yet there’s no doubt that Axelrod is involved with trying to get Bill and Hillary Clinton to do Obama’s bidding to white folks, especially in light of the fact that the DLC has just released a “toldya so” poll of their own, showing that no matter how many new black, young or latte-sipping voters they register, they still need the “Bubba” vote to increase dramatically. That’s why Bill Clinton is being deployed to Florida, according to a Politico review of tonight’s Big Dawg appearance on Larry King. Clinton said:
“You know, they think that because of who I am and where my politic[al] base has traditionally been, they may want me to go sort of hustle up what Lawton Chiles used to call the ‘cracker vote’ there.”
“Bubbas,” “crackers,” and all other assorted racists and bigots picking on poor Barack Obama is a theme not so much reflective of true American emotion, as it is of careful seeding and nurturing of deliberately laid astroturf. The gardeners of this faux movement are guilty of ratfucking on a national scale, picking at our country’s racial scabs to advance the career of an inferior candidate for their own selfish purposes. If that ain’t “astrofucking,” I don’t know what to call it.
The Reuter’s headline reads: “Obama Ahead Of McCain Amid Wall Street Turmoil”
The opening paragraphs:
Democrat Barack Obama has opened a 9-point lead over Republican John McCain in the U.S. presidential race amid turmoil in the financial system and growing pessimism about the economy, according to a Washington Post-ABC News national opinion poll released on Wednesday.
Among likely voters, the poll found Obama now leads McCain by 52 percent to 43 percent. Two weeks ago the race was essentially even, with McCain at 49 percent and Obama at 47 percent, the Post reported.
The article proceeds to list various poll results from “likely voters,” “those polled,” “respondents,” “Independents” “white voters,” and “white women.” The last paragraph:
The survey of 1,082 people, including 916 registered voters, was conducted Friday through Monday. The margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus three percentage points and four points for the sample of 780 likely voters.
MSNBC leads with the “9 point” headline and buries the above paragraph in the middle of their story. They also add more categories: “Obama supporters,” “McCain supporters,” “Republicans,” “conservatives” and “white evangelical Protestants.”
I expected to read what “guys named Josh” and “girls who have vibrators” thought, but, alas, that wasn’t there. I guess when you poll about 1,000 people and have roughly the same number of categories as people, sooner or later you run out. Of course, “guys named Josh” who know “girls who have vibrators” might get counted more than once if they’re also “white, Republican, evangelical, conservatives who drive Volvos and are likely to vote if they have time,” but those kind of guys probably don’t hang out with that kind of girl.
Does Axelrod have pollsters on the payroll or does he just spoon feed their results to the media?
John McCain has skillfully maneuvered Barack Obama into a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” position smack dab in the middle of a rock and a hard place. No matter what you think of the merits of McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign and return to work, ostensibly to lend his “expertise” to the effort to fix the country’s current economic problems, at least it’s bold and decisive action that forces Obama to respond in kind; boldly and decisively. So far, though, he’s just been wimpy.
