Feeding The Fish

Ok, so I’m back from my saunter around North America. It was thrilling to experience firsthand just how broken the American media is: They really talked for several weeks about Obama and his wife sharing a  fist-bump when he got the nomination. This might signifies him as someone who respects his wife and apparently considers an equal, so an obvious sign he is wrong for America and may in fact be a secret Muslim terrorist (one Fox newsanchor saw this truth and described it as “a terrorist fist jab“, I love that country.)

This aside, there have been more important developments in the Presidential race: Obama won! But then almost immediately pisses off his base by supporting the FISA bill, not only legalizing Bush’s previously illegal wiretaps and giving immunity to the telecoms companies that broke the law to help him but also delivering the next president unprecedented power. That’s style!

Now, there are some crazies out there who see the ability to wiretap without a warrant to step on some of those fourth amendment rights (as Obama is a former constitutional law professor, he should really know better.) This is naturally billed as a compromise, but it’s that delightful form of Democrat compromise which involves giving away in exchange for the warm glow of being “strong on terror” by doing absolutely everything Republicans want.

This leads to the internet equivalent of snowballs in hell: substantial critiques of Obama rising to the front of reddit.  It is of course a complete surprise to me that Obama would move to the right given how much he’s used their talking points to attack Democrats (yes yes, he wasn’t the only one) and progressive ideas. It is also a shock that “post-partisanship” is in fact, exactly the same thing as Clinton’s triangulation. There has been so much change we’re right back to 1992.

This “compromise” plays perfectly into the perception that Democrats have nothing intelligent to add to the debate or they wouldn’t keep going with the Republican line, as do these rumours that he’s planning to keep Gates on as Secretary of Defense. That just seems to send the message “Oh, don’t worry about voting for a Democrat, we’ll have solid Republicans around to do the hard foreign policy stuff.” You can have as bi-partisan cabinet as you like, but for the love of pete, what I keep hearing about Obama is that his foreign policy is like, super awesome - you don’t get there by keeping Bush’s guy on, nothing says ‘Democrats aren’t serious’ more. If we could get the Barack Obama who ran for the nomination (and actually seemed to be have an independent take on foreign policy) back to run for President that’d be a slight improvement.

The best possible path I see to the Presidency for McCain (and despite my growing validation of my dislike for Obama, I still don’t think McCain has a chance) is a national security narrative and Obama is playing right into his hands by saying that the Republicans have it right to focus enormous unchecked power in the hands of the president - but that he’s a far more trustworthy guy to wield that power. Does that really seem a credible argument to anymore? Obama is developing a nasty habit of accepting Republican’s framing on national security (just as he has previous accepted their framing on health care). This is not how you bring about change.

But then we hear from the people who seem utterly incapable of accepting Obama is not, in fact, super-Jesus: Oh, it’s genius, Obama is moving to the center to get votes! He’s just lying to all those independents and republicans to get them to vote for him, and he’ll get back to be a principled leader once he’s elected!  This would be great…if he wasn’t already at the center and this is really moving to the far right.  This does give us a chance to catch all the Obama shrills who are now officially useless as infomation sources (I’m looking at you Keith Olbermann, “boldly standing up” to the ACLU isn’t something that should be applauded in the Democratic nominee, it’s just a way of making him sound bold in a way that  “Obama caved to the far right” doesn’t. )

This line is encouraged by the reemergence of the media narrative that any Democrat running for president is automatically the most liberal person possible (In reality, Obama has a very centrist record) and all Republicans are cuddly moderates (for example, McCain is clearly at the center of the political spectrum with the 2nd most conservative voting record in the Senate). This is the classic game where Democrats will election after election feel a need to move to the center to win, whilst Republicans will calmly respond by talking even more about ultra-conservative ideals and move the public idea of where the center actually is even further to the right. This is a formula that means that the right’s stupid ideas are winning time after time even when they lose elections.

Whilst there were a lot of flat out lies and innuendo around Clinton’s public perception the idea that she was a centrist candidate was basically true - but there seems to be this strange perception that Obama is far more liberal than she is, when in fact their voting records are virtually identical. The concerning thing about the result of the primary is that a lot of people seem to have projected a lot of positions onto Obama he doesn’t actually have and voted for a fictional candidate, and the real thing is likely to disappoint.

Next post: The crazy shananigans that have been going on here whilst I’ve been gone.