Campaign 2008 (Camp Pain 2008)

Campaign 2008



This is a confusing election campaign. John McCain and Sarah Palin have snatched the issue of "change" right out of Barack Obama's hands. The breathtaking chutzpah of that leaves me shaking my head. A rightwing Bushite religious evangelical anti-choice zealot, Palin has redefined the boundaries between truth and falsehood with a "lipstick" smile on her face while looking America straight in the eyes. Her speechifying against Barack Obama's taking "earmarks" in Illinois was stunning given her track record in Alaska – Alaska gets more Federal Dollars per capita in earmarks than any other state.

McCain has abandoned virtually every "maverick" independent position he had in order to placate that same religious right angry crowd to win his party's nomination. Multi-millionaires John McCain and Mitt Romney have cast Barack Obama as out-of-touch with the middle class and despite Barack having been raised by a single mother in the lower middle class and pulling himself up by his bootstraps and attending college and a getting a law degree and a Professorate and doing grassroots community organizing; he's the "uppity" one, he's the elite. Racist undertones permeate the air on this one. And Rudy Guliani--the pro-choice, pro-gay rights, cross-dressing, congrats-for-still-being-married-to-your-third-wife, ex-mayor of New York mocks Obama's cosmopolitanism and celebrates "small town values" . . . and is granted credibility by the Republican convention crowd while doing so. Huh?

Barack Obama's experience as a professor of law and a community organizer in Chicago and in the Illinois Senate and as a US Senator are discounted while Sarah Palin's small town mayoral service and two years as Governor are portrayed as preparing her to be that heart beat away from the Presidency. Please……is anyone noticing this out there?

Palin supporters trumpet her "choice" to have her last child afflicted with Down's Syndrome while fighting hard to deny other women their "choices." She made a choice -- let others have the right to make their choice. She looked America in the eye and said parents with special needs children would have a friend --reporting on her record of budget cuts in Alaska for "special needs" children tells a different story.

Palin's droll mockery of "community organizing" led Stephen Colbert to do a "Thousand Points of Bullsh**" routine on the Colbert Report the other night. She was deriding the very activities trumpeted by that same political party not so very long ago. Barack's faith based organizing in his earlier life is now the subject of ridicule – by the party pushing "faith based" services. The scope of the political double-speak and the success of the Big Lie must have George Orwell spinning in his grave.

The Republican's success at steering this campaign from "issues" to "personalities" appears to be working. Americans have all too often been persuaded to vote against their own economic interests: tax cuts for the top 1% of the nation's ultra-wealthiest citizens are applauded by people struggling in the middle class.

Palin's energetic, continuing, effective and incredible ability to avoid press scrutiny has me shaking my head. McCain's "change" mantra after supporting Bush positions for the last 8 years, their ability to frame four more years of the same as "change" has inverted the fabric of language – words no longer mean anything. The McCain tactic to challenge Barack's experience was so breathtakingly abandoned in its pick of Sarah Palin that I applaud their campaign's ability to perform strategic magic. McCain's continuing ability to ride Gov. Palin's new found "celebrity" to a lead in the polls while mocking Barack Obama as a "celebrity" is so cynical and dishonest that Karl Rove must be laughing all the way to the bank.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.