Madam President

What's At Stake In The 2008 Election

The default position is to accuse me of backing Obama

because he's black, which you can only do if you don't know me very well. If Barack Obama was running the same kind of loathsome, exploitative and, yes, evil campaign that McCain has been running, I'd be calling him out on it just as strongly. Alan Keyes, a conservative black Republican who ran for president in 2000, is a right-wing extremist nut (and, I've said so) who has also said very hurtful and untrue things about Barack Obama. Which is, likely, mostly out of jealousy as Obama's candidacy is viable while Keyes has mostly existed on the periphery as a Republican asset; Keyes being The Black Guy You Invite to Republican functions to prove how inclusive they are. Cynthia McKinney, the Green Party nominee, is a self-absorbed demagogue whose shameful grandstanding over her assault of a Capitol Police officer for asking her for her ID pushed more urgent and ultimately tragic news of two missing black boys off the air (and, thankfully, ended her political career).

To suggest I would not or do not go after black politicians or black leaders is ridiculous. There is no partisanship, here: McCain has run an evil, write this down someplace, evil, campaign. He has run the Old School GOP playbook that turns neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother, husband against wife, and, most certainly, black against white. His campaign has weakened this country rather than strengthened it. And he can huff and puff and blame Obama all day long for not taking public financing or for not agreeing to a bunch of town hall meetings—both of which would have evened the playing field for McCain—but, at the end of the day, nobody forced John McCain to base his entire argument on hate and fear. This is the choice he's made, this is the bed he must lie in.

I struggle to remain as objective as I can be, but not expressing my disappointment at lies—and that's what they are, lies—and hateful tactics just makes me the hypocrite. Not pointing this stuff out requires me, by default, to campaign for John McCain by doing what Focus and other Christians are doing: seeing what they choose to see, compromising and even slandering the very Gospel they claim to embrace by turning a blind eye to sin in order to accomplish a political goal. I remain shocked by the Christian right's self-induced chronic myopia, that they'd sell out Christ's principles in His name. That winning is more important than our ethics and even our dignity. Pastors: we should not be organizing to defeat ballot amendments or elect candidates. But we should be organizing to tell people about Jesus, and to live lives worthy of His sacrifice. In order to do that, we need to be an informed people, and we need to speak out against lies, against injustice.

Then, pastors, having prepared our flock, we need to get out of the way and let each of us make our own choice.

Legally Blonde: Palin's candidacy would not make a credible empty-head chick comedy.

Nobody Doesn't Like Sarah P.

McCain released an ad citing past praise from Obama, and mailers including Hillary Clinton's image and praise for McCain. Responding Friday, Obama said he respected the unsuccessful 2000 primary campaign McCain Obama waged against then-Gov. George W. Bush. Obama noted the Arizona senator's stand then against negative political attacks. "I admired him for it," Obama told a crowd of 25,000 in Des Moines. "He said, 'I will not take the low road to the highest office in the land.' Those words were spoken eight years ago by my opponent John McCain," Obama said. "But the high road didn't lead him to the White House then, so this time he decided to take a different route," which Obama assailed as "slash-and-burn, say-anything, do-anything politics." In the Republican's ad titled, "Obama Praising McCain," Team McCain highlights Obama's past praise for the GOP nominee's stance on global climate change. In another new ad titled, "Freedom," McCain reminds voters about his military service and how it shaped him. "I've served my country since I was 17 years old and spent five years longing for her shores. I came home dedicated to a cause greater than my own," he says. "Don't hope for a stronger America. Vote for one. Join me." [Daily News]

McCain is still working the military hero pedal on the organ, but he's still not making it relevant to his leadership qualifications (as opposed to qualities). This is a spectacular bungle on the McCain campaign's part—it's strictly amateur hour to keep exploiting McCain's POW status (which potentially alienates many who have also so suffered for our country) without the ad explaining, in real terms, how that experience qualifies McCain for leadership. So far as his personal qualities go, his sacrifice for America is laudable and inure to his quality as a person, as a human being. But, being held captive and tortured says nothing about his qualification to lead.

Even now, in the ninth hour, McCain is still not talking about what, specifically, he plans to do as president. Barnstorming the nation, his strategy in the home stretch—in the face of the failure of his mean-spirited, hateful campaign—is more hate, more attacks. McCain now spends every waking hour being negative and attacking the frontrunner with increasingly harsher and more ridiculous rhetoric, much of which tends to splash back on McCain himself (most recently, the nonsense about Khalidi—further evidence of the McCain camp's shoot-from-the-hip improvisational style). Meanwhile, new reports are awash in campaign leaks that claim Sarah Palin has "gone rogue," ignoring the McCain campaign's directives, making huge political blunders (Khalidi, fruit flies, keeping the $150 thousand wardrobe issue alive), while forging an exit strategy from a doomed campaign which will position Palin for a 2012 presidential run (it is to laugh).

None of which is to suggest McCain won't win on Tuesday. It would be a huge mistake for anyone to count him out. In a fascinating article on Newsweek's site, political analyst Jonathan Alter games out a scenario for a McCain win, one in which the polls, the electoral math and the statistics are all mostly irrelevant. In Alter's nightmare scenario, "In the end, the problem was the LIVs. That's short for "Low-Information Voters," the three fifths of the electorate that shows up once every four years to vote for president but mostly hates politics. These are the 75 million folks who didn't vote in the primaries. They don't read newsmagazines or newspapers, don't watch any cable news and don't cast their ballots early. Their allegiance to a candidate is as easily shed as a T shirt. Several million moved to Obama through September and October; they'd heard he handled himself well in the debates. Then, in the last week, the LIVs swung back to the default choice: John McCain. Some had good reasons other than the color of Obama's skin to desert him; many more did not. In October, a study by the Associated Press estimated that Obama's race would cost him 6 percent. The percentage was smaller, but still enough to give the presidency to McCain."

My nightmare scenario is black folk lying on the couch all day instead of voting. Or, finding their polling paces jammed packed because they waited 'til the last minute to go down there, sucking their teeth and going to the mall instead, perhaps figuring Obama's going to win anyway, so why bother. Time and again, God has opened doors for people—all people. We, the black community, have historically, time and again, taken hard-won freedoms, freedoms our fathers and their fathers bled and died for, for granted. As Chris Rock might say, I'm quite sure black people will come out to support Barack Obama (and a few will certainly support McCain). Niggers, on the other hand, will lay on the couch, guzzling Olde E while lighting blunts off one another. In fact, I'd guess a great many blacks have registered—many for the first time. Niggers, on the other hand, missed the deadline and become threatening and histrionic, blaming da white man when asked about it, I fo'get what day it wuz. This is a dichotomy white America, and most certainly the Republican party, either does not understand or for whatever reason refuses to engage: black people are not homogenous. We are a plurality. We are a diversity of opinion, of worldview, of culture. Black people don't like niggers any more than whites do.

I tend to suspect all the statistical analysis going on is mostly a waste of time: come Election Day people will, in overwhelming measure, vote much the way children vote on which snack to have for recess. They will make an intuitive decision, most of whom having not read or learned nearly enough to make an informed one. Black folk will tend to vote for Obama, white folk will tend to vote for McCain. Informed white folk—Democrat or Republican—will likely favor Obama, but many of those votes will not be a vote for Obama so much as a vote against Sarah Palin, as John McCain's questionable health make her a de-facto co-presidential nominee moreso than a vice presidential candidate. But the human wave out there will be, as Alter gloomily speculates, the Low Information Voter who hates to read and is bored by politics. I'll bet you can name at least ten of these people off the top of your head. You can tell who LIV's will vote for just by what neighborhood they live in and, sometimes, by what car they drive. They are, for the most part, lemmings who will simply go with the default or, worse, make up their mind inside the voting booth (assuming they actually get there). Maybe this benefits Obama, but it likely won't.

This is why it is so terribly important to not take this election for granted, to not blow it off or trust the polls that predict an Obama landslide. These LIV people are out there. They are clueless and, even worse, not terribly invested one way or another. And they have just as much say November 4 as you do. Not only should you get your lazy butt off the couch, but you need to be working the phones all day, making sure your friends and family and loved ones get their lazy butts off the couch. Don't believe the hype, folks. Or, because of your laziness, in the midst of one of the worst economic crisis this country has ever faced, we will be swearing in President Sarah Palin, a person who is farther to the right than President Bush and not nearly as intelligent. Beloved: it's up to you.

Christopher J. Priest
2 November 2008
editor@praisenet.org
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Blacks & The GOP

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Only 36 of the 2,380 delegates seated on the [Republican] convention floor are black, the lowest number since the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies began tracking diversity at political conventions 40 years ago. Each night, the overwhelmingly white audience watches a series of white politicians step to the lectern — a visual reminder that no black Republican has served as a governor, U.S. senator or U.S. House member in the past six years. [Washington Post]

"You have plenty of images of committed white people for McCain; you need pictures of committed black people," Krim Ballentine said as he surveyed the Xcel Energy Center. As one of just 36 black delegates, Ballentine stands out. The retired chief deputy U.S. marshal printed up business cards for the occasion calling himself a "Constitution Philosopher" and "The Last Negro." The latter title, the back of his card explains, is in honor of the "First Negro," Othello. "Disrespect is the main ingredient in every act of violence, with racism being the most discernable negative attribute of disrespect," the card reads. Ballentine is a committed McCain supporter, but he won't be voting for him in November. "I'm from the Virgin Islands," he explains; he can't vote in presidential elections. The black man standing nearby won't be voting for McCain, either. "That's my son," Ballentine said. "He's with Republicans for Obama." [National Journal].

Sarah Palin

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In an interview with the Omaha World-Herald, Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel (R) suggested that Palin doesn't have the foreign-policy experience to be president. "'She doesn't have any foreign policy credentials," Hagel said in an interview. "You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don't know what you can say. You can't say anything." Hagel continued: "I think they ought to be just honest about it and stop the nonsense about, 'I look out my window and I see Russia and so therefore I know something about Russia,'" he said. "That kind of thing is insulting to the American people." And this one: "I think it's a stretch to, in any way, to say that she's got the experience to be president of the United States," Hagel said. —From Mark Murray, NBC News

Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.

Palin limited her duties further by hiring a deputy administrator to handle much of the town's day-to-day management. Her top achievement as mayor was the construction of an ice rink, a project that landed in the courts and cost the city more than expected.

Arriving in office, Palin herself played down the demands of the job in response to residents who worried that her move to oust veteran officials would leave the town in the lurch. "It's not rocket science," Palin said, according to the town newspaper, the Frontiersman. "It's $6 million and 53 employees." —New York Times, Sept. 13, 2008

Since joining the Republican ticket, Palin has faced questions about whether she is qualified to be vice president or, if necessary, president. In response, the first-term Alaska governor and Sen. John McCain point to the executive qualifications she acquired as Wasilla mayor, a six-year stint from 1996 to 2002 that represents the bulk of her political experience.

Palin says her time as mayor taught her how to be a leader and grounded her in the real needs of voters, and her tenure revealed some of the qualities she would later display as governor: a striving ambition, a willingness to cut loose those perceived as disloyal and a populist brand of social and pro-growth conservatism.

But a visit to this former mining supply post 40 miles north of Anchorage shows the extent to which Palin's mayoralty was also defined by what it did not include. The universe of the mayor of Wasilla is sharply circumscribed even by the standards of small towns, which limited Palin's exposure to issues such as health care, social services, the environment and education.

Firefighting and schools, two of the main elements of local governance, are handled by the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, the regional government for a huge swath of central Alaska. The state has jurisdiction over social services and environmental regulations such as stormwater management for building projects.

The mayor oversees a police department created three years before Palin took office; the public works department; the parks and recreation department; a planning office; a library; and a small history museum. Council meetings are in the low-ceilinged basement of the town hall, a former school, and often the only residents who show up to testify are two gadflies. When Palin was mayor, the population was just 5,500. —Washington Post, Sept. 14, 2008

There is no shame in winning an exclusive interview with a reclusive subject, of course, and David Westin is hardly responsible for the McCain campaign’s cynical handling of its Eliza Doolittle problem, but if he had managed his network’s “get” more responsibly he might have expelled its odor of compromise. The occasion of the Alaska governor’s début before the national media called for a lightly edited, extended one-on-one, aired on a single night, so that American voters might assess the candidate’s answers and demeanor in full. Instead, apparently to maximize ratings and branding opportunities, ABC doled out Palin sound bites on six network broadcasts over two days, as well as in supplemental ABC Radio and Web releases. In the end, Westin exploited the Governor’s moose-hunting, baby-juggling appeal as if she were a magnetic contestant on one of the network’s prime-time reality shows—“Extreme Makeover: White House Edition.”

Palin’s answers to Gibson’s questions made it clear that all the briefings and all the cramming that she could absorb in two weeks were not enough to endow her with what her résumé so plainly indicated that she lacked: sufficient exposure to national-security issues to serve as President, should she be required to do so. —The New Yorker, Sept. 15, 2008.

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