I feel like I’ve been roused from a Rip van Winkle-like slumber as I write this latest entry, the first in several weeks.
Unlike Rip, though, I don’t find that much has changed. The same wood-headed pundits jabbering and scribblers scribbling the same inanities and dramatizing and hyping the same quotidian garbage as reality scurries away unfettered and, most disturbing, providing absolutely no insight into what’s going on in an historic Democratic race for the nomination and the presidency.
As I lay snoozing, oblivious to everything around me, it wasn’t that quite a lot didn’t happen. There was “Bittergate,” the renaissance of former Weather Underground bomb maker, William Ayers, Obama’s defeat in PA despite weeks of campaigning and a huge advantage in dollars, and even the reemergence of the right reverend pariah, Jeremiah Wright, the crazy uncle that Obama couldn’t keep locked in the attic. To anyone reading this blog though, indeed anyone capable of reading and listening, and thinking at a level just a bit higher than a jellyfish, none of this should come as any surprise…except, that is, to the media, the so-called fourth estate, who just can’t seem to get anything right these days, so concerned is it with entertainment and profit margins.
What remains the same, then, is not only the weakness of Obama as a candidate but the inability of the media to perform even a basic analysis of the candidates and their electability. Obama’s weaknesses, at least as a candidate in the general election, have been apparent from the very beginning--his liberalism, questions about his patriotism, experience, and why, if he is, in fact, a real American…he can’t bowl worth a damn. This is clearly indicated by his poor performances in the states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida, and his difficulties in winning over white working class voters. The Democratic nominee will need to do well in these states and with such voters to have a chance at beating McCain.
Anyway, you’d think that the media had been the ones snoozing with all the astonished chest beating, desk thumping, and horrified looks these schlubs exchange as they purport to be shocked by Obama’s seeming dismissal of working class Pennsylvanians; his association with Wright, who it would appear may be the devil himself; and, worst of all, the fact that Obama doesn’t look comfortable lunching on Wonderbread and baloney sandwiches with the Schlitz and gun-rack crowd. “By god,” they thunder, with eyes as wide as folks who have slept for one hundred years, “Obama sure is aloof” and (here you must whisper and look as if aunt Ella just farted at the funeral) and “elitist.” And concerning Obama's patriotism, he has flirting with treason, they cry, because he won’t wear a flag pin on his lapel like the other lemmings. "Oh, woe is us, what kind of new world is this?"
I’ve written for months that this kind of crap—issues that have to do with the skewed way many Americans view such matters of patriotisim, religion, security, and the like—pretty much make Obama unelectable, if not in the Democratic primary, than almost certainly the general election when he will not have the caucuses or the goofy Democratic nominating process to help him, but will need the helping hand of a few good troglodytes or near troglodytes. But, as usual, the media can’t even get the electability issue right. If there are some questions now about this, it either has to do with the fact that HC has gone after Obama in a way more befitting a Republican, or there is a focus on the events undermining Obama as if they are a kind of terrible misfortune, bad luck, or SOL happenstance. Events, that is, that, astonishingly, have little to do with his liberalism, inexperience, or even judgment.
Of course, each of these events glimpsed by the media through a glass darkly is more a function, really, of a greater fundamental weakness, the things that will doom Obama should he win the Democratic nomination. Liberal—yes; inexperienced—yes; soft on terror, the war, and security (at least in many folks minds)? Yes, yes, and yes. As dumb and shortsighted as is recent discussion of Obama’s bowling, comfort with blue collar workers, and his possible radicalism (association with Wright and Ayers), and as crude as these are they point to the even meaner perception and indeed framing of Obama to come in the general election. The Republicans are already beginning to have a field day with him in North Carolina, releasing ads about Obama’s association with Wright that even John McCain claims to find objectionable. There will soon be more ads questioning everything from his belief in god and his patriotism to his willingness to “do battle with terrorists abroad so we don’t have to do it here,” or whatever it is George W. Bush, soccer moms, and soccer dads like to say. And the Democratic race isn’t even over yet.
So while the media continues to grope blindly at the various parts of the elephant, good luck in waiting for them to piece together the whole. It will be far too late then—probably already is—and we will likely have an unelectable candidate that the media has been swearing for months was the candidate to beat all candidates, a true Republican killer, the kind of candidate that sends Republicans scurrying away in fear and makes them reconsider their party affiliation.
Kind of like the war in Iraq and the Bush administration’s spin on it in which the media all too happily acquiesced, even in the puerile belief that we would be greeted with flowers and our “mission accomplished” in weeks instead of years. The media even proudly used the Administration’s term of “embedded” when describing there relationship with the United States forces in Iraq, though“in bed with,” of course would have been much more appropriate, especially with the recent revelations that the media were paying ex-generals and the like to provide expert "analysis" on Iraq which, it turns out, was was actually PR vetted by the Pentagon. Of course by the time the folks in the media finally found their bearings after being enchanted by the likes of Colin Powell, Chalabi, and the and the 4-star PR flak generals, it was too late. Even McCain voiced some criticisms of the war and Bush before many in the media.
For me anyway there is some good news because despite the recent shuteye, I don’t feel like I’ve missed much. The bad news is that we are ever closer to having as our President, John McCain, a tragic continuation of the current President and his policies, something that could have been avoided perhaps if the media were not paid by each flap of the gum, bump in the Nielsen ratings, or bit of spittle flying from Chris Mathews’ mouth but instead rewarded for thinking for a moment or two before blabbering whatever first comes to their febrile minds or performing some analysis or research before putting pen to paper.
This, however, would require looking regularly at presidential campaign history; researching the demographics and voting patterns of the electorate over the last several years; considering how Obama and Clinton are likely to be portrayed and perceived in the general election based on their voting records and past associations; perhaps undertaking a study on in the importance of experience in times when voters are hysterical about their safety and security, and making some connections between these things. This would be a lot to ask, though, in a time when the news must be made palatable with vignettes that would be rejected as too lame by even America’s Funniest Home Videos (just watch Keith Olbermann’s program on MSNBC for a nearly Platonic example of this).
I don’t know about you, but when all is said and done it kind of makes me want to go back to bed.
RIP
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