The Fix
How The Democrats Will Stop Barack Obama
The Democrats have a simply impossible task ahead of them.
Their
sure-fire candidate is no longer inevitable. The viability of
Barack Obama’s campaign gave Hillary Clinton’s campaign
credibility and ballast, obscuring Bill Clinton's obvious
influence and creating the fiction that this race is about a
white woman versus a black man. It’s not. It’s about the
Washington establishment versus the idealistic insurgent.
Who
would Jesus vote for?
that is, at the end of the day, the question many of us should
be posing. Who would Christ, who seems to have been eliminated
from this political process, endorse? Mike Huckabee? Is voting
for Huckabee, who, at this writing, is statistically prohibited
from actually winning the Republican presidential nomination,
our Christian duty? Are we even allowed to vote for Hillary
Clinton, considering how many of us do not believe in women
pastors or even women preachers? Black Christian men supporting
Senator Clinton is one of those doctrinal paradoxes: most of
these men would not allow her to chair their deacon board, let
alone pastor their church. But they’re supporting her for
president.
What should our Christian response be to Barack Obama, who is
pro-choice and, so far as I know, does not oppose gay marriage
(or at least leaves the matter up to the individual states where
it constitutionally belongs)? So very many black people are
voting for Obama because he is black, because it is an important
moment in history, just as so many women are voting for Clinton
for the same reason. But, at the end of the day, there really is
only one reason to vote for someone for president: because you
believe they’re the best person to lead the nation.
I’ve seen dozens upon dozens of enthusiastic black folk on TV
explaining why they’re voting for Obama. Not one of them have
articulated even one of the senator’s positions on the issues.
That’s because, my guess, most of these folk—our folk—don’t know
Obama’s positions on the issues. Most women don’t know Hillary
Clinton’s positions on the issues. At the end of the day, it is
all face politics: it’s all about the candidate who can make the
best and longest lasting impression on the largest number of
people. And we, all of us, get so caught up in the competition,
in the euphoria, that, for many of us, our Christian duty gets
lost in the shuffle.
Don’t vote for Obama because he’s black. Don’t vote for Clinton
because she’s a woman. Don’t vote for McCain because he’s a
white male who *looks* presidential. Get online and find out,
for sure, what the candidates’ positions are on the issues. Know
what you’re talking about. Then ask God for His opinion. Vote
your convictions. Vote your hopes, not your fears.
The Democrats have to stop Barack.
Barack Obama can win all the states he wants. All the delegates
there are to win. At the end of the day, his own party will
sabotage him, will go out of their way to stop him. Because they
know what the world knows: America is a racist place and,
despite all the lofty primary hollering, when those curtains
close November 5th, America will vote for a white male before
voting for either a white female or a black man.
Obama’s campaign was great for the Democratic party in that it
made Hillary Clinton’s campaign so much more relevant. Rather
than being an obvious shill for a third Bill Clinton term, the
viability of Barack Obama’s campaign gave Hillary Clinton’s
campaign credibility and ballast to the point where, at this
writing, most of the news I’m seeing have moved off of the
obviousness of this being Bill’s comeback and centered on
Senator Clinton and her policies. Which is absurd: Hillary was
an important voice in Bill Clinton’s administration. To suggest
this isn’t a run at a third term for the co-presidents is naïve
and disingenuous. But it is a façade Hillary desperately needed
to erect, that Bill will somehow be on vacation the entire time
she’s in office and that she alone will be calling the shots,
even as her main argument for being president is the first
Clinton administration. She *has* to have it both ways, while
convincing us she is her own woman. And she’s managed to do
that, thanks largely to Barack Obama.
The viability of Obama’s run—not the run itself but the fact
that it is unprecedented in its viability—seems to make this
race about a white woman versus a black man, a lofty left-wing
goal. But it’s not. It’s about the Washington establishment
versus the scrappy insurgent. The Clinton campaign will make it
about experience versus ideals, but Obama, who has served eight
years in the state legislature, has a great deal more
legislative experience than Clinton does. The foreign policy
experience argument doesn’t wash, either, as it was Bill in the
room with world leaders, while it was Hillary who was having tea
with the wives.
The fact is, both candidates are sublimely qualified. Vote for
whomever you like. But don’t believe the hype that this is
somehow between a white woman and a black man. This is the
Clinton Machine: a mighty political dreadnaught whose sole
purpose is to make Hillary Clinton look like June Cleaver—an
average white housewife with a dream—going up against a naïve,
inexperienced black kid. That’s a lie. And it’s a lie the
American people are gobbling up in great masses.
Hillary Clinton is the Establishment. Which is both good and
bad. The Clinton Administration had great successes and great
failures. There is no arguing that the economy flourished in
those years and we were, for the most part, at peace (not
counting Mogadishu or Bosnia). There’s no guarantee that an
Unchained Hillary will be anywhere near as good a president as
Bill Clinton, but that’s the product her campaign is selling:
Bill Part II. She’s not Bill Part II, she’s Hillary. Which isn’t
enough to vote for her: vote for Hillary if you like Hillary,
what she stands for, what her policies are. But don’t vote for
her because she’s a woman, or because you’re anxious for the
good ol’ Bill days. This isn’t the planet Bill Clinton governed
on: it’s an entirely different world. And, no matter who comes
in in January, they will inherit a political and economic mess
left by, hands down, the worst president this country has ever
had.
Additionally, don’t vote for Barrack Obama because he’s black.
Find out what he’s actually about [LINK]. Find out what his
policies are, what his real experience has been. Voting for
Obama just because he’s black is easily as wrongheaded as voting
for Clinton just because she’s a woman or because you believe
she’ll bring back the good ol’ Bill days.
Despite being the party of hope, the Democratic party is likely
to adopt Republican-style tactics in order to stop Obama, whom
they (and everyone else) is likely terrified of. The Democratic
party establishment is obviously as cynical as the GOP party
hacks, who are actually counting on racism to push the aging
Senator McCain over the top. What nobody is saying is, both
parties are conducting themselves as if they believe (or are, in
fact counting on the fact that) white voters will not elect a
black man as president of the United States. Much as we’d like
to believe that racism is dead and gone, the truth is this is
still an extremely racist country, and fear motivates much more
effectively than hope.
The GOP is spinning it that they’re much more afraid of running
against Obama than Clinton, but I don’t believe that. I think
either candidate is meat for the GOP machine, Hillary is
incredibly polarizing with high unfavorables. She galvanizes the
Republican party in a way no other candidate—Democrat or
Republican—can. With Obama, on the other hand, the only real
card they have to play is race. They’ll cloak it in euphemisms
about his lack of experience versus McCain’s fair-weather
conservatism, but at the end of the day there isn’t enormous
space between the two, other than that McCain is a beltway
fixture and Obama a scrappy insurgent.
The experience debate is, therefore, just as likely to backfire
as the Obama campaign will undoubtedly twist it back on the
McCain campaign, painting McCain as an aging beltway hack who
will be too old to even seek reelection in four years. The Obama
camp will sell McCain as More Of The Same—which is just as
disingenuous as the Clintons positioning Hillary as Jane
Everywoman.
Hillary Clinton is the establishment, is the Bill Clinton
Dreadnaught. McCain, in his own way, is nearly as much the
scrappy insurgent as Obama is. McCain and Obama share the ironic
circumstance of being leaders in parties who don’t want either
of them as their candidate. If the GOP could find a way to bring
McCain down, they surely would—the same being obviously true of
Obama.
The main difference is McCain has to hide the fact he’s easily
as revolutionary a candidate as Obama, and that the
establishment fat cats will be just as out of luck with McCain
as they might with Obama. With Clinton and Obama sucking all the
oxygen out of the room, it’s near impossible for blacks to even
consider McCain, and, thus far, McCain’s not exerted an awful
lot of energy pursuing them. But we, as informed voters, should
make no mistake about it> John McCain is not your father’s
Republican. Conservative party hacks are predicting a shift to
center and sharp veer to left in a McCain presidency, and I tend
to agree. That’s what the GOP fears most: that McCain, while
campaigning as a conservative, is actually a Bush 41 moderate: a
much fairer broker than any Republican president we’ve seen in a
long time. He is certainly worthy of our consideration.
Obama, on the other hand, is hardly the inexperienced kid who
wandered in out of the rain. If you substitute the keywords like
“experience” and “untested” and, even, “youth,” for more
unfortunate language of race, you’d see the careful efforts of
both Clinton and McCain to play the fear card in lieu of the
race card, while ignoring the baggage they both drag into the
race with them. The Obama camp’s likely response: he has less
years in Washington, and therefore less brainwashing, less
favors owed, less damage to cover up, explain or apologize for.
He is, in a reasoned argument, a more effective and viable
candidate *because* he’s spent less time there, because he
brings less baggage with him.
The likeliest scenario for stopping Obama, and make no mistake
about it: the Democratic party hacks are *desperate* to stop
Obama, is this: they will find some excuse to seat the
delegations from Michigan and Florida, whose delegates were
stripped from them for violating primary rules, and will award
those delegates, more than 200 of them, to Senator Clinton. This
will cost Clinton the black vote and severely, if not fatally,
wound their candidate. No matter how much sweet talking she
does, black America will, in large measure, stay home, unless
she offers the veep position to Obama and unless Obama accepts.
Clinton/Obama is the Democrats’ only hope for pulling this out.
The fallback position will be to activate the so-called “super”
delegates—uncommitted party elders who can vote any way they
want—and put Hillary over the top that way. The Democrats are
desperate to avoid that because, again, that will cost them the
black vote and put Obama in a position to call the shots.
Thing is: I doubt Obama would be interested in the veep slot.
Never say never, I mean, he could go to Washington, answer
phones for eight years and become the prohibitive nominee in
2016. But I don’t think politics is necessarily what Barack
Obama is all about. If the Democratic party tanks him, and I
believe they’ll try, I think Obama will go back to the senate an
enormously powerful and influential politician that President
Clinton or, more likely, President McCain will be forced to deal
with.
The Democrats have a simply impossible task ahead of them. Their
coronation has failed. Their sure-fire candidate has not sailed,
inevitably, to the nomination. If Obama, by some miracle, wins
Texas (extremely unlikely) or Pennsylvania (better shot), it’s
over for Hillary. Her only path to the nomination would then be
dirty tricks which would be just as likely to put John McCain in
the White House.
The Clinton’s response to Obama’s viability has been one of
anger. How dare someone run against Hillary. How are they win.
Obama’s campaign, indeed, made Hillary’s campaign actually about
Hillary and not abut Bill. That was no small favor. But nobody
actually thought things would come to this point. Most political
junkies, this one included, assumed the Obama campaign was about
2016, not 2008. I think we’re all scratching our heads, going,
“Gee—who knew?”
Bottom line: Texas and Ohio, March 4th and Pennsylvania March
22nd. Should Obama win any one or, most certainly, any two of
those key primaries, he must be awarded the Democratic
nomination for President of the United States. If he does, and
the Democrats refuse to nominate him, they’ll destroy their
chances in November.
If Hillary wins all three, that may lock it up for her. If she
only wins tow of the three, well, that’s where things get messy
at the convention. With John McCain waiting in the wings.
Christopher J. Priest
17 February 2008
editor@praisenet.org
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