September 12 - It's Time to Wake Up, Democrats

Blunt headline, I know. Panicky even. Melodramatic? Nah. This is a big election. It calls for melodrama. The Dems have history, truth, and all kinds of facts and numbers on their side. There are only two reasons for failure:

A) This is a fundamentally conservative country. After all, the Republicans have won seven of the past ten presidential elections.
B) This is a hopelessly ignorant and misguided country taken advantage of by the powerful few. I'm thinking about you right now, Roger Ailes.
C) The Dems complacently fall asleep at the wheel. They do appear to have learned important lessons from the last two losses, such as fighting back more against character slander and getting out the vote more effectively. Still, the tenor of Obama's campaign seems to dip in and out of a sense of inevitability. Keep dippin and you'll come to on November 5 with a french fry sloppily covered in catsup. Then you'll realize that you won't be able to afford another french fry for a long time. OK this analogy is getting away from me.

Every time there’s a presidential election, the Republicans come out swinging, while the Democrats try to repel the conservative barrage with protracted political prose. And then voters go to the polls and choose subversive rhetoric over comparatively complex appeals to their intelligence.

This year it seemed like things would surely turn out differently. The Republicans were undeniably on their heels in the flaming wake of a flunked presidency that hasn’t surpassed a 38% approval rating since September 2006. McCain professed to know nothing about voters’ number one issue – the economy – while Obama inspired teems of frothing fans at massive rallies. Many began to wonder if GOP stood for Grimly Outdated Parody.

Then along came Sarah Palin, with her adorable American (read: white and cute) family, her relatable hunting habit, and her media-hawking, establishment-eviscerating applause lines.

The suddenly thumping Palin pulse gave McCain’s campaign a post-convention polling bump of (depending on what poll you use) 0-10% above Obama, just days after being 5-9% down.

As Palin threw her biting hunks of red meat to the rabid masses, it became apparent. The Republicans are energized again, and their appeal has nothing to do with reality. In fact their tactic now is to shift the nation’s focus from its current political reality, because that reality was spawned by their own party.

McCain and Palin have lowered their stump speech standards to a shameful level, sullying the national political discourse at a time of crucial historical importance.

The GOP’s devious tactics began in earnest when it gave us a sneak peek of what the next step of the Patriot Act might look like by sending police in riot gear to arrest over 800 protesters – including 19 journalists – outside their convention in St. Paul. Inside, fanatic crowds waved signs reading “Service” and “Country First” and cheered as George Pataki, Rudy Giuliani, and Sarah Palin took turns mocking Barack Obama’s beginnings as a grassroots community organizer.

What was Ms. Palin doing while Obama was establishing a job training program and a college prep program, increasing the membership of his community organization from 1 to 13 and its annual budget from $70,000 to $400,000? Embodying change, of course. She was busy winning third in the Miss Alaska pageant, transferring schools four times, and working as a TV sports reporter.

The McCain campaign is now doing its darndest to co-opt Obama’s “Change” theme. And it just might work.

On September 6, Obama said the following to a crowd in Indiana:

“I know the governor of Alaska has been, you know, saying she is change…. But when you’ve been taking all these earmarks when it’s convenient and then suddenly you’re the champion anti-earmark person, that’s not change. Come on. I mean, words mean something. You can’t just make stuff up.”

The Republicans know that their words don’t really have to mean anything. They just have to make something – emotion. When Rick Davis, John McCain’s campaign manager, said this election is “not about the issues”, he was simply summing up his campaign strategy. George W. Bush was thoroughly unimpressive on the issues both times he ran. Anyone who watched him debate against Al Gore or John Kerry could see that. But Gore and Kerry came off as nothing more than wooden stiffs spouting statistics. Bush’s ‘aw shucks, have a beer with me’ persona was all he needed. And let’s not kid ourselves. Obama (and not Hillary) is this close to victory specifically because of his electrifying personality.

It is impressive that John McCain endured years of torture in Vietnam. But does that remarkable life story qualify him for the presidency? Are the strength and perseverance attributed to him useful tools for that office? Is the presidency something to be endured, or is it a thinking man’s job? We Americans must ask ourselves these questions before we make another internationally embarrassing and domestically devastating pick for president.