Gentlemen, Start Your Rhetoric

Hillary Clinton was heaved back into the real world on Saturday at noon when she finally - mercifully - conceded that her historic but disastrous campaign was toast and jelly, and that Senator Barack Obama was indeed going to be the 2008 Democratic nominee for the office of president. Her "victory speech" on the night of the final Democratic primaries will no doubt be remembered as one of the more curious events in political history. It was one of those bizarre, Nixonian moments that makes the American electoral process such a weird joy to behold. There our gal was, in a fortified, underground bunker (I kid you not!) two stories below the sidewalks of merrie old Manhattan, in order to insure that none of her wildly cheering, glazed-eyed supporters would get the message on their cell phones that Barack had actually won. It truly was the funniest moment in what can only be described as a surreal political season. By the weekend her own exhausted and embarrassed campaign advisers were telling her that it was all over. One would only hope that they have enough sense to keep her away from sharp objects and window ledges.

Over a year ago, on February 23, 2007, I wrote on this site:
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"Will Barack Obama be the next president of the United States? It's hard to say. But one shouldn't be foolish enough to dismiss his chances outright. We live in desperate and extraordinary times and the American people, if only out of sheer desperation, might very well turn towards an extraordinary candidate. That very fact is enough to put the good Senator over the top. We can only hope. Talk about audacity!"

At the time it was my belief that he had "one hell of an uphill battle ahead of him". After he won the Iowa caucus in January, I wrote,

"You know, I was just thinking: this son-of-a-bitch just might be able to pull this thing off! Wow!"

Back in January, a Barack Obama victory in November seemed to be nothing short of a potential miracle. That is no longer the case. Far from it. From the vantage point of Sunday morning, June 8, 2008, his success should only seem inevitable. But Obama is not a sure thing. As a matter of fact, at the present time, the polls have he and McCain in a dead heat. How can this be so? Times are so bad; John McCain is such a terrible candidate; Obama is such an extraordinary nominee. The only thing his possible defeat will prove is that the American people are nothing more than a nation of incurable yahoos, racists and fools. If he is defeated on November 4, that will be the only plausible, rational explanation.

That was not meant to imply that everyone who casts their vote against the Senator from Illinois is a bigot; certainly that is not the case. There are good and decent people out there who have honest, philosophical disagreements with the Democratic party that have nothing to do with race. I am merely attempting to point out the undeniable truth that the GOP's assault on our government in the last thirty years has done such harm to this once-great nation, a Democratic landslide on Election Day should be a foregone conclusion. We're talkin' a 1936 style victory here, folks. That was the year when Franklin Delano Roosevelt won every state in the union with the lame exception of Maine and Vermont. Or 1972, when Dick Nixon trounced George McGovern everywhere but Massachusetts and the District of Columbia (Goodness gracious! Weeda Peeple really screwed up that year, didn't we?)

The fact that a Democratic victory in the autumn is not beyond doubt at this point in time, given the total corruption and mismanagement of the Republican party since the 1994 "Gingrich Revolution", is kind of disturbing when you think about it. Really, there seems to be no other choice that a nation of thoughtful, informed voters could make. John McCain has said (among other equally stupid things) that we could be bogged down in Iraq for another one-hundred years. How on earth is it that this guy is neck and neck my man, Barack? What gives here? Just look at the kind of campaign Obama has run! One thing that has to be admitted about Barack Obama is that he is organized. Before he got involved with Illinois politics, he made his reputation in Chicago as a community organizer - and a damned good one at that. His campaign thus far has been run like a Swiss watch. He surrounds himself with thoughtful, blunt advisers; not sycophantic "yes" men like Hillary Clinton and a certain, half-witted cowboy wannabe from Crawford, Texas whom we all know and loathe.

The only reason Obama is not a sure bet to win this thing is because he is an African American. That very fact speaks volumes as to what kind of people we are. The only way we will be able to avoid the shame of race playing a role in Barack's defeat (God forbid that should happen) will be if the Republicans nominate some pathetic, reactionary Uncle Tom to run as second on the ticket. Don't dismiss that as a possibility.

Candidate Obama's organization, the men and women he has chosen to surround himself with and run his campaign, are nothing if not impressive. These are the kind of people you want running the executive branch of your government. So many times in our history we have settled for less or, as in the case of 2000 and 2004, much less. We can't afford that "luxury" (if that's what you want to call it) again.

At no other time since 1932 has the need to go in a radically new direction been as obvious as it is in this year. If we foolishly reject the Democratic candidate we will deserve everything that happens to us. So desperate is the Bush Mob to forestall the inevitable, catastrophic economic collapse that is months if not weeks away, they have resorted to sending checks in the amount of several hundred dollars to every taxpayer in the United States. Their intention is to keep the economy barely sustained just long enough to be able to get out of town while the getting is good and blame the coming, unavoidable meltdown on the next administration - an administration they have some reason (although not every reason) to believe will be a Democratic one. What they are in the process of doing may very well serve as a temporary fix, but it will eventually only further deplete our already decimated national treasure. Seriously, has it dawned on you yet how utterly contemptible these people are? I was just wondering.
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There is reason for hope. The inhabitants of this troubled land are starting to pay attention to what is happening to them and they are beginning to understand why it is happening. Recent polling has concluded that eighty percent of the public believes that America is headed in the wrong direction (Yes, dear and gentle reader, a full twenty percent of your fellow citizens are so mind-twistingly stupid, they actually believe that we're headed in the right direction). FOX Noise's ratings are starting to fall. Last week, more people tuned into Keith Olbermann than watched Bill O'Riley. Recently, three Democrats were able to win in special, off-year elections in regions that were previously thought to be Republican strongholds. It has been many weeks since I have heard the name "Brittany Spears" even mentioned in the electronic media. So there is definitely room for optimism here.

Another thing that people are starting to wake up to is what a hideous mistake it was to sign onto the so-called "Reagan Revolution" a generation ago. On January 20, 1981, a feeble-minded, failed "B" movie actor by the name of Ronald Wilson Reagan stood on a podium in front of the Capitol Building in Washington DC, and told a nation of likewise feeble-minded Americans that government wasn't the answer to their problems, government was their problem. Remember this was at a point in our history when the population of this country was fast approaching two-hundred and fifty million human beings. If there is one thing that a quarter of a billion men and women need, it is to be governed - not to be dictated to, mind you - but governance. There is a decided difference. Don't let the kooks and criminals on the far right try to make you believe otherwise.

For almost thirty years, we have passively allowed these clowns to chip away at the very fabric of the social structures that brought the middle class into existence when President Roosevelt ushered in the New Deal era seventy-five years ago. We have seen where the insane philosophy of these hard-line extremists has taken us. What they have been trying to do is bring America back to the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a period Mark Twain called "The Gilded Age" when the the wealthy controlled even more of this nation's treasure than they do now. If you would like an idea of what life was like for regular working men and women in the first decade of the twentieth century, please read the book, "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair. Written over a century ago in 1905, it is the heart breaking story of workers in the Chicago meat packing plants of that day who were brutally exploited by criminally low wages and then tossed aside like garbage when their injuries on the job left them without any benefits or compensation to sustain them. When Mr. Sinclair died on November 25, 1968 at the age of ninety, his most famous book was all-but-forgotten. It is quite telling that recent years have seen it's resurgence.

Is this class warfare that I am waging here? As the extremely rich Warren Buffett once observed, "If this is class warfare, my class is obviously winning". You're damned right this is class warfare, pardner! As one of the many bumper stickers on the back of my van says: "TURN LEFT AT NEXT ELECTION".

This might seem to you to be an alarmist statement but it really is not: the very future of the United States depends on Barack Obama winning this election. Not only that, we should see to it that George W. Bush is remembered as the last Republican president in history. That party, once known as "the party of Abraham Lincoln", has sold out the American people to the highest corporate bidder. Once the party of Theodore Roosevelt, the GOP has looted and raped the American economy to such an astounding and incomprehensible degree, that our debt is now being managed by China. China!!! That party, which was founded in 1856 with the abolition of human bondage as it's abiding purpose, has enslaved the poor and middle classes in order to benefit a class of people who already have more money than they know what to do with. That party, which has cynically distorted the teachings of our Lord and Savior (okay - MY Lord and Savior) in order to perpetuate their reckless destruction of our American heritage, has curtly dismissed the admonition of Jesus of Nazareth that we care for the poor, clothe the naked and feed the hungry:

"I tell you the truth. Whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me."
Matthew 25:40
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That party must never be allowed to govern this country again.
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Pray for peace.
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Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

SUGGESTED READING:
The Sermon on the Mount