Hope vs. Fear
Hillary wants to cast Obama as a 'Brother From Another Planet.'
With the exception of such all-Anglos as Monroe, Fillmore, Pierce and Coolidge, none of America's 43 presidents has ever borne a name that ends in a vowel. We traditionally like 'em not just white and male, but plain vanilla. President Barack Hussein Obama would pose a shock to that system.
Opposition to him is not so much old-fashioned racism as fear of the "other," with the subtext not just our tortured racial history, but tangled views of class and patriotism. Fortunately for him, different strains of the American character often work to ease our anxieties: openness, optimism, hope.
Every election of the past four decades has turned on the tension between hope and fear. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson won by using fear that Barry Goldwater would blow up the world. In 1968, Richard Nixon used code words like "law and order" to exploit racial fears as part of his "Southern strategy." Four years later, Nixon, who believed politics is about mobilizing resentments, did it again, depicting George McGovern as the candidate of "acid, amnesty and abortion." Jimmy Carter won on hope over Gerald Ford in 1976, then lost in 1980 by trying to stoke fear of Ronald Reagan as out of the mainstream. Reagan, an FDR-like hope candidate, was re-elected in 1984 on a "morning in America" theme.
The elections of the last 20 years show both the potential and the pitfalls of a fear campaign in 2008. George H.W. Bush stumped at a New Jersey flag factory in 1988 to drive home the argument that Michael Dukakis, a Greek-American and the first clearly ethnic politician to head a ticket, was vaguely unpatriotic. It worked. Some Democrats are so spooked by this GOP history of successful slime merchants that they wrongly assume everything thrown against Obama will stick. Floyd Brown, the race-baiter who created the Willie Horton ad that year (depicting Governor Dukakis furloughing a murderer, who struck again), has cut an ad hitting Obama for being soft on "terrorist" gang members because he voted against extending the death penalty to them. This one fails. Similarly, Sean Hannity can't slam Obama for not wearing a flag pin when he doesn't wear one himself.
Hillary Clinton has echoed Fox News's guilt-by-association tactics—linking Obama to people he barely knows like Louis Farrakhan and William Ayers. The sad irony is that these are the same attacks used against her husband in the elections of the 1990s. The GOP tried to destroy Bill Clinton for his relationships (much closer than Obama's tangential connections) with Arkansas crooks, sleazy fund-raisers and unsavory women. But "The Man From Hope," while seen as less honest than Bush or Bob Dole, bet that issues and uplift were more important to voters than his character. He won, though the fears concerning what he had done to "dishonor" the White House helped damage Al Gore in 2000. The first election after 9/11 was, not surprisingly, a fear campaign, as George W. Bush persuaded voters in 2004 to be afraid, very afraid, of "soft on terror" Democrats.
The big question this year is whether voters are sick of fear campaigns. Hillary, desperate to stop Obama, is betting no. That's why she has Osama bin Laden and Fidel Castro in a recent ad. But I'm not so sure the 2004 rules still apply. This fall may be more like Reagan's victory in 1980 or Clinton's in 1992, when scare tactics fell short. Will voters believe that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.'s inflammatory sermons make Obama a dangerous black nationalist? Will they conclude that serving on a board with Ayers (along with many bankers and lawyers) and accepting a campaign contribution from him 12 years ago make Obama into a suspicious radical? Only if Obama fails, as he did in the last debate, to dispatch distractions in a crisp and presidential way.
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Member Comments
Posted By: kristinkare @ 05/20/2008 2:02:55 AM
Comment: Clinton takes Indiana by a ???razor??? and Obama wins North Carolina by a huge margin. Nevertheless, Kentucky, Montana and West Virginia are still to come.
The Democratic race for nomination is still very much alive ??? and most likely to be decided by superdelegates
If you???re tired of waiting around for those super delegates to make a decision already, go to LobbyDelegates.com and push them to support Clinton or Obama
If you haven't done so yet, please write a message to each of your state's superdelegates at http://www.lobbydelegates.com
Obama Supporters:
Sending a note to current Obama supporters lets them know it's appreciated, sending a note to current Clinton supporters can hopefully sway them to change their vote to Obama, and sending a note to the uncommitted folks will hopefully sway them to vote for Obama. It's that easy...
Clinton Supporters too ???. !
It takes a moment, but what's a few minutes now worth to get Clinton in office?! Those are really worth !
Sending a note to current Clinton supporters lets them know it's appreciated, sending a note to current Obama supporters can hopefully sway them to change their vote to Clinton, and sending a note to the uncommitted folks will hopefully sway them to vote for Clinton. It's that easy...
Posted By: powin @ 05/13/2008 4:22:51 PM
Comment: Mr. Alter,
The media's clarion call that it's done with a statistical dead heat between the three prospective contenders for the White House, seems too early to toss FL and MI voters out to sea. CA, FL, MI, PA, OH, MA, NY are a must........and, although I LIKE Obama, he hasn't won the most critical blue states...That's one robust reason to continue this democratic process.
Despite MILLIONS of supporters, Hillary Rodham Clinton has been vehemently vilified because it remains socially acceptable to be sexist. Corporate men dominate the airwaves; these men have held the keys to success, and invariably, they oversee most election coverage (Philadelphia Inquirer).
"Media news people, frequently operating with complete integrity and goodwill, are able to [CONVINCE} themselves that they choose and interpret the news "objectively" and on the basis of professional news values....[Not in this scenario, however.] Voter attention is focused on style and personality ("Yes We Can") --anything but the issues that are of primary concern to the concentrated private power centers that largely finance campaigns and run the government" (Noam Chomsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology).
Women in the media, too, have been lulled into tolerating it because it is difficult to stand up to SEXISM at the risk of losing their paychecks. It's blatant that women in the media see the disparate treatment of HRC, but have convinced the masses that this pugilist is a pariah.
Without an NIE report read, Senator Obama touts his sound decision-making (as a State Senator) for opposing the War in Iraq. With hindsight, unbeknownst to him, there were no weapons of mass destruction. His argument that he made the right choice is a fallacy: he didn't make any such decision as a U.S. Senator with the emotions of September 11th still riding high and our response to maintain strong national security. Albeit, none of these assertions are earth-moving or original arguments; what is important here is to remind voters that he does not command a bastion of foreign policy knowledge nor does his redundant, "I voted against the war" a viable argument to support his candidacy.
Unfortunately, those who purport that the frontrunner will unite people have already demonstrated that the frontrunner will unite NO one except perhaps the myopic misanthropists, who, most likely, come January 2009, will be in a seething cauldron of woeful, broken promises teeming with scintillating rhetoric.
Share this with the superdelegates.
Posted By: powin @ 05/13/2008 4:21:20 PM
Comment: Mr. Alter,
The media's clarion call that it's done with a statistical dead heat between the three prospective contenders for the White House, seems too early to toss FL and MI voters out to sea. CA, FL, MI, PA, OH, MA, NY are a must........and, although I LIKE Obama, he hasn't won the most critical blue states...That's one robust reason to continue this democratic process.
Despite MILLIONS of supporters, Hillary Rodham Clinton has been vehemently vilified because it remains socially acceptable to be sexist. Corporate men dominate the airwaves; these men have held the keys to success, and invariably, they oversee most election coverage (Philadelphia Inquirer).
"Media news people, frequently operating with complete integrity and goodwill, are able to [CONVINCE} themselves that they choose and interpret the news "objectively" and on the basis of professional news values....[Not in this scenario, however.] Voter attention is focused on style and personality ("Yes We Can") --anything but the issues that are of primary concern to the concentrated private power centers that largely finance campaigns and run the government" (Noam Chomsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology).
Women in the media, too, have been lulled into tolerating it because it is difficult to stand up to SEXISM at the risk of losing their paychecks. It's blatant that women in the media see the disparate treatment of HRC, but have convinced the masses that this pugilist is a pariah.
Without an NIE report read, Senator Obama touts his sound decision-making (as a State Senator) for opposing the War in Iraq. With hindsight, unbeknownst to him, there were no weapons of mass destruction. His argument that he made the right choice is a fallacy: he didn't make any such decision as a U.S. Senator with the emotions of September 11th still riding high and our response to maintain strong national security. Albeit, none of these assertions are earth-moving or original arguments; what is important here is to remind voters that he does not command a bastion of foreign policy knowledge nor does his redundant, "I voted against the war" a viable argument to support his candidacy.
Unfortunately, those who purport that the frontrunner will unite people have already demonstrated that the frontrunner will unite NO one except perhaps the myopic misanthropists, who, most likely, come January 2009, will be in a seething cauldron of woeful, broken promises teeming with scintillating rhetoric.
Share this with the superdelegates.