What He's Not Saying
10 Things The Obama Campaign Refuses To Say
4. My biggest mistake: I put bipartisanship ahead of fixing the
country.
America was in crisis. I invested too much time and too much
energy in winning even a single Republican vote for policies of
vital and immediate national interest. At least two million more
people would be working today had I not done that and simply
used our Democratic “Super” majority to speed relief to those
who needed it most. Republicans would rather win political power
than to actually help anybody or fix the economy.
The Season We Went Too Far
It is possible that, a generation or two from now, history may regard this sad and tragic period of America’s story as a watershed moment when the nation finally stopped pretending its racist past was behind it. If nothing else, the Age of Obama has revealed not a post-racial America but a polite détente over the race issue as blacks made economic, social and academic gains. Crossing the line to political power, however, ripped the scab off of festering wounds of hate that Americans of all ethnic blends found alarming—do people actually still think this way? The politicizing of racism, racism as political strategy to divide the electorate, is particularly despicable because it forces those who are not particularly racist to nonetheless hold their noses and align themselves with the hate mobs who do. Were I a Republican, I wouldn’t want to be identified with the unapologetic racists now dominating conservative politics simply because we share a political ideology. My ongoing complaint with the Republicans is not the racism so blatantly and openly within their ranks, but the failure of good men and good women conservatives to openly denounce it. They say nothing, allowing their party to be seen in this heinous light, for the sake of “party unity.” I am ashamed and embarrassed by these cowards who refuse to repudiate the obscenity within their own house.
5. Republicans politicizing race and national origin
demean their party and their principles.
It makes all Republicans seem unreasonable, irrational and ignorant. This is good for politics but bad for America. Republicans of good character, even those who disagree with us, should stand up for their party and their principles and call this evil what it is. Racism and hate are despicable. Those who employ them in a political contest are despicable. (Points to a white man) I am just as white as you. (Points to a black woman) I am just as black as you. (Points to entire audience) I am just as American as you.
I was deeply saddened but not surprised last week by the Kansas State Objections Board, which potentially held up Mr. Obama’s listing on the Kansas electoral ballot over the objection of a single Kansas resident claiming Mr. Obama’s birth certificate was not enough proof that the president is a natural-born citizen of the United States. I presume Mr. Romney’s birth certificate or a certified copy thereof has been accepted as valid proof of his citizenship—presuming such proof was required or presented—but Kansas apparently requested and received confirmation from the State of Hawaii that the president’s birth certificate is authentic. This “birther” nonsense is, of course, simple dog whistles for racism. It is the new “nigger,” a way to slur the president and all African Americans by proxy. My dismay is not for the complainant who filed the obviously politically-motivated objection, but for the Kansas board which dismissed the complaint Monday not because it was ridiculous, racist, and an obvious attempt at voter suppression but because, as they said, “... the [Republican-led] board ruled that it lacked authority to carry the issue further.” Republicans, conservatives, white people, failing to call this evil what it is, makes them all guilty, so far as I am concerned, of the shameful sin of hate. In retrospect, at some distance from these events, this may be seen as a good thing: a turning point in American history where we stopped pretending racism has been fixed and actually began an earnest dialogue about fixing it. The ethnicity of the next African American presidential candidate will, I presume, be no big deal, and I’d doubt, sincerely, that his national origin will be challenged. As despicable and hateful as this political season is—with racist white conservatives around the country moving quickly and quietly to suppress black and liberal votes—it may be the watershed moment this nation desperately needs: the season we went too far. History will record this as a shameful era for American Exceptionalism. And that’s probably a good thing.
6. Obama runs around “apologizing for America.”
Governor Romney repeats this charge over and over, whipping
crowds into a frenzy, but never offers even one specific example
of my ever having done that. The governor claims he would never
‘apologize for America.’ What about when America was wrong? When
unavoidable tragic circumstances resulted? Should we not have
apologized for the tragic killing of Afghan women and children
last week? When we wiped out indigenous people,
broke treaties and took their land? When we enslaved people?
Oppressed people? When hate and bigotry was once part of our
laws? Governor Romney is a proponent of an Arrogant Jingoism
which admits no faults and rights no wrongs. This is precisely
the same blundering tone-deafness that dominated the previous
decade of American foreign policy and diminished America's
standing in the eyes of the world. Humility and regret are part of American Exceptionalism,
that we don’t overlook or rewrite our history just to gloss over
our shortcomings or eliminate our
mistakes. Instead we learn, we grow,
we right wrongs.
Are We Better Off Than We Were Four Years Ago? Unquestionably.
Obama's Lethargic Campaign
What is puzzling for me is why the campaign isn’t now using all of the GOP’s lies and dirty tricks and obstructionism against them. Instead, Obama For America is running a tepid campaign attacking Mitt Romney personally. I suppose some of that is necessary, but the record the Obama campaign should be going after is that of Congress. I’m sure somebody in some room somewhere advised against this: makes the president look like he’s making excuses. The anger the American people have for the president about the terrible economy and other issues is a powerful source of energy to tap into. The Obama Campaign is not doing that. It is running Hillary Clinton’s campaign, not the slick, inventive guerilla attacks of Obama ’08. They are running a very Establishment Campaign against an Establishment Guy. What they should be doing is putting the entire Republican Party on trial. How did Romney get the nomination in the first place? Why aren’t any GOP heavyweights running? Every GOP heavyweight is sitting this one out because every one of them knows they would not be acceptable to the wingnut extremist fringe of their party, the cousin-marrying, mouth-breathing, irrational Jethros who have taken over conservative politics. The Obama campaign isn’t asking those questions, isn’t providing the checklist of presidential initiatives either rejected or watered down to nothing by GOP obstructionism. Forget Romney’s record, the Congressional record is real, easily available, and spells out a pattern of borderline treason by elected public officials who chose, en masse, not to govern but instead to capriciously keep the economy bad so they would have something to hammer the president with come 2012. These are the facts. They are not disputable. The Obama Campaign is doing absolutely nothing with them.
7. America’s credit rating was downgraded on
Obama’s watch
America’s credit rating was downgraded because of Congress’s
ninth-hour brinkmanship
over raising the United States’ debit
limit ceiling, gridlock deliberately caused by House Republicans
in an effort to gain more tax cuts for wealthy Americans.
Standard and Poor’s decision said, in part: “…the downgrade
reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and
predictability of American policymaking and political
institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and
economic challenges…” This is a direct result of Republican
obstructionism.
And this, to me, is where the campaign fails. First, they have either lost the guy (or gal) who was doing all of that progressive and inventive art direction for the 2008 campaign. All of the graphics for the 2012 campaign look alarmingly bad, including (hard to believe) terrible photos of Michelle Obama, bad slogans, and creaky old school fonts (stock Arial for the uninspiring single-word theme "Forward") that leave me gasping. What happened to that slick New World Obama ’08 introduced us to (and from which we culled our cover graphic because none of the ’12 art looks like anything)? This time, there is no iconic key art of the president, just a jumble of really bad photos of him and the First Lady. Second, the campaign has chosen a path and strategy that leaves me puzzled. Either I’m too dumb to understand it, or the president is following unfathomably bad advice. The entire campaign should be echoing Clinton: “You hired me to do a job. But nobody, I mean nobody, could fix all the damage I found in only four years.” That’s the campaign. That and playing to a universal anger—among both Republicans and Democrats—at Congress, which simply says “no” to everything and plays politics with everything. The unmitigated gall of Paul Ryan blaming the president for the country’s credit downgrade should have been dead on arrival. Even Republicans are angry at Congressional Republicans for their debt-ceiling misadventure. Any thinking person knows it was the Republicans and not the president who caused that. Why the Obama Campaign is not drilling wells into the GOP’s own back yard by shining a light on facts more easily brought to light than Mitt Romney’s Swiss bank accounts is simply beyond me. It is either a brilliant strategy or a complete mess: they don’t know what they’re doing. I am increasingly suspecting it is the latter. Clinton’s speech, his eloquent mockery of all things Republican, has fairly convinced me the Obama Campaign is a complete mess. So much so that I highlighted Clinton’s speech and not Obama’s because it was far superior and made a much more effective case for the president’s reelection than anything the Obama Campaign has spent $200 million on over the summer.
8. Obama prolonged the Great Recession
Congressional Republicans deliberately and capriciously conspired to prolong
the recession in order to use it as a political issue.
Even now, they celebrate and work hard to maintain bad job reports, high
unemployment figures, and the historic tide
of home foreclosures because those statistics fuel public anger and fear, both of
which are traditional tools of Republican politics.
Their actions are obvious, on the record, and are not in dispute. They blocked
or attempted to block every single effort we made to help the economy, including currently blocking
a jobs bill which the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office
estimated would create between one and two million jobs, and nearly sent the nation
into a second Great Depression with political brinksmanship over
the national debt ceiling. Republicans employed an unprecedented number of filibusters,
more than any Congress in history, and other political
and procedural maneuvers to stop anything that might actually help the economy.
The Question Mark:
He won't tell us specifics. He won't release his tax returns.
The request is not extreme, the request is not unusual. What is
unusual is America electing its first
president with secret accounts in the Cayman Islands and
Switzerland, accounts whose sole
meaningful use is to avoid U.S. taxes.
9. We have no idea what a President Romney
would do.
He continues to refuse to tell us. People are accusing Governor Romney of having no real plan for
America’s economic recovery or foreign policy. I disagree. I am
sure the governor indeed has a plan, but he will not share it
with the American people before the election because, o matter
what the plan is, it will divide his supporters into those who
agree and those who do not. But America deserves to know what,
exactly, they are voting for. The Romney campaign has
successfully and expertly floated a lot of rhetoric over their
main platform, which is a complaint against the incumbent.
Beyond that, they’ve not presented an accurate or detailed
picture of specifically how they would govern.
If you are considering voting for Romney just to somehow “stick
it to” the president, you’re an idiot. If you are planning to
just stay home, sit this one out, you’re an even bigger idiot.
Not because of Governor Mitt Romney’s core beliefs or ideals,
but because he has no core beliefs or ideals. That’s what’s so
frightening about his candidacy: he is the robo-candidate. He
will take whatever side of whatever issue moves him in the
polls. This is not rhetoric: this is his record. And Romney has
enough cash and credit to turn out your lights; to flood a
target area with his completely fictitious commercials, lying
over and over until those lies are ingrained in the public
psyche. I would actually respect Romney if his record didn’t
display, for all to see, a pattern of disengenuity. Mitt Romney
is a compete fraud. If you’re mad at Obama, voting for Romney is
a stupid way to express it.
If you’re considering turning against Obama in the election
because your issue or cause has not been resolved, do you really
think a President Romney is going to give a damn about
you or your issue? “I’m mad at Obama because the economy still
sucks, so I’m going to vote for the guys who wrecked the economy
in the first place and who obstructed every single solitary
effort the president made to fix it.” Idiot.
10. Yes, I CAN run on my record.
We halted America’s downward spiral toward economic collapse,
which included the loss of nearly three-quarter of million jobs
every month. We passed health care reform, something every
president since Richard Nixon has attempted and been
defeated by the powerful medical lobby. We signed a historic
nuclear weapons treaty with Russia, reducing nuclear stockpiles
on both sides by 50%. We ended Don’t Ask, Don’t
Tell, ended the war in Iraq, reformed Wall Street, bailed out
the auto industry—saving at least a million jobs, created the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection and the
Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act,
ending unfair fees on credit cards. We passed the Lilly
Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which now requires equal pay for women,
the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act, expanded loan
programs for small businesses, enacted the largest reform of
student aid in 40 years, overhauled America’s food safety
system, appointed two pro-choice women to the Supreme Court,
including the first Latina Supreme Court Justice, invested in
clean energy. We have captured or killed dozens of top al Qaeda
leaders, including Osama bin Laden, and begun the drawdown of
troops in Afghanistan.
Yes, I can run on my record.
This Congress has gone to historic and unprecedented lengths to
ensure the economy remains bad, that more and more people lose
their jobs and homes, solely to make the president look bad.
They have blocked every effort he has made to govern and now
blame him for not governing. But, for some unfathomable reason,
the Obama campaign is not effectively using this obvious and
provable truth to their advantage. I can’t imagine why. The
campaign should have one and only one TV commercial: a rolling
list of the president’s efforts to help the economy, along with
Congressional Republican House and Senate votes, filibusters,
and other procedural maneuvers preventing those initiates to
pass. The president’s campaign is too focused on Romney. The
president should be running against the entire Republican party.
Trying to paint Romney, a demonstrably opinionless yes-man who
adopts the position of whatever helps him win, as evil is a
waste of time. The people supporting Romney can’t stand Romney
and don’t trust Romney. For them, it’s not even about Romney.
He’s just the guy running. They are not voting for Romney, they
are voting against Obama. That’s the campaign Obama should be
running, not running against Romney, nobody cares about Romney,
but running against the groundswell of personal animus against
him. The Obama campaign should be running at least one
commercial, somewhere, confronting people on their true motives.
“In your quiet times, in your moments of reflection, wherever
you face yourself or hear your God, have you ever once stopped
and asked yourself a simple question— ‘Why? Do I really believe
these talking points? Am I really invested in Mitt Romney? Or do
I just hate the president? And, if I do, why?”
My biggest fear for the election is people staying home, either
because they’re confident the president will win or because the
novelty of the first black U.S. president has worn off and they
can’t be bothered to turn off Jersey Shore long enough to go
cast a ballot. I am doubly concerned about blatant and obvious
voter suppression efforts by Republican officials and
legislatures across the country. Many under-informed voters are
going to show up and not be given a ballot, either because they
lack the proper identification or because they slept through The
2010 Midterm Election
and don’t realize they must re-register for 2012. 2010 was a
crucial election, one the vast majority of the Obama Wave simply
skipped because it was about local politics and mostly white
folk and we didn’t care. The debt crisis, the devaluing of
America’s credit, the stalling of the 1.5 million-plus Jobs Bill
and many other critical initiatives are a direct result of our
laziness, our refusal to keep ourselves informed and act. Many
of us, whining about Obama, would have a job today had we'd
actually voted in the 2010 Midterms. But we let them win. And
their number one priority is not getting you a job, but costing
the president his.
It is my fervent prayer all of America, black, white or other,
now understands that message, that conservatives have played
political games in the midst of the greatest national crisis this
country has seen since the Great Depression. I am trying to be
fair, but I can’t imagine a rational reason for voting for Mitt
Romney and, thus, rewarding the despicable behavior of
Republicans. The only reason I can possibly imagine for any
reasonably informed person to enthusiastically back Romney is to
get rid of Obama. When you ask them why, they start reciting GOP
talking points. When you really press them, you end up with
sputtering, inaccurate hate fur balls. The closer you get to the
truth, the angrier these people get. Because you’re now hitting
a long-running nerve that connects directly to the heart of this
ridiculous, sham campaign. These people can’t stand Romney. They
hate the president. And they’re afraid to admit why.
Christopher J. Priest
16 September 2012
editor@praisenet.org
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