Is Obama Gore-d?

Welcome back to Columbine, USA, where it's once again OK to hate the cool, beautiful people.

OK, can someone please explain to me how the fuck this happened?

Sen. Barack Obama goes to the Middle East, Central Asia and Europe largely in response to McCain attacking him for not going to Iraq. He takes the world by storm, the highlight of his trip delivering a rousing, if substanceless, speech in Berlin to 200,000 adoring fans. Germans held up placards begging for Obama to be their Chancellor. He actually makes Gordon Brown smile, a feat about as easy as Rush Limbaugh getting it up without someone else's Viagra.

McCain responds with sour ads accusing Obama of being… semi-popular, a status conferred on him by what used to be almost half the nation.

Then, by the time Obama gets back from what was by all accounts a successful trip, during which he made not a single gaffe, his lead over McCain completely evaporated in the wake of the most mean-spirited attack ads this generation has ever seen?!

So, someone please bring me up to speed and tell me how the fuck this happened?

Especially during a summer in which McCain has made one howler after another, including referring to a unified Czechoslovakia, insisting that Iran is funding al Qaeda, that Ahmadinejad is the Supreme Ruler of Iran, thinking he’s in New Orleans instead of Kenner, Louisiana, underestimating troop strength in Iraq by 25,000 troops, believes Iraq borders with Pakistan and thinks the election is in January?

How can 44% of the people (And let’s not forget a recent poll that said 80% of Americans think we’re headed in the wrong direction) still think that John McCain would make a better President than Barack Obama in spite of not deviating from Bush‘s foreign and domestic policies by one iota?

Now, regular readers of mine will note that I’ve said time and again Obama is not my man. I think the man lacks a spine, one who will immediately throw under the wheels of his own Straight Talk Express anyone he’s ever met who says anything that pisses off the right wingers. I dislike the man sucking up to said right wingers, including AIPAC and certain right wing editors.

However, I dislike even more when McCain attacks Obama by likening him to Neo of The Matrix (although it ought to be pointed out that Neo eventually prevailed over Agent Smith and the machines) in his The One ad. I liked even less McCain’s sour grapes ad by comparing him to Paris Hilton (and after Hilton’s family had contributed the maximum $4600 to McCain’s campaign) that never advanced McCain’s positions on the issues as much as groused about his lack of popularity.

And somehow this had made him more popular than ever?? And McCain's comparing Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, two other airheads more famous for their nonprofessional antics than their alleged virtues?

Are we Americans, despite our higher educational system, the stupidest carbon-based life forms in the solar system? Are the people of those other countries that collectively swooned in Obama’s presence, including many of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, actually smarter than that alarming 44%?

It’s the real Olympics that are coming up in four days, not the Special Olympics! We’re supposed to be electing the best person for the office of President, not giving gold medals and “everyone’s a winner” status just because some thick-necked, uber-jowled idiot starts carping about feeling left out. Just because McCain rolls into town on his Straight Talk Express, why are we supportively clapping as if it's the SPED short bus transporting our darling special little boy from the special school?

Obama’s been Gore-d.


Those of you who didn’t have PTSD blackouts after the boondoggle of the 2000 election will remember that meme that Bush and not Gore was the guy with whom you’d rather have a beer. Gore’s too stiff and unyielding, they said, as if being as supple as Mary Lou Retton was somehow an overarching consideration when electing the next leader of the free world.

We saw it again four years later when former Connecticut native George W. Bush anticipated Saxby Chambliss by presenting himself as the true patriot after having flown in the Texas Air National Guard and not the patrician fellow who may or may not have shot himself in the foot in Vietnam.

And now here we are, with 80% of you pissed off and anxious because of the direction our nation has headed because you let the GOP steal one election after another and 44% of you are going for the ancient mariner because he’s, well, experienced. He knows war, you say, as if we need another Republican war preznit to start another war in the Persian Gulf.

That Obama fellow? He’s too full of himself. He’s, well, stiff and elitist and, well, there’s the matter of the madrassa and the middle name thing. Who does he think he is?

Well, here’s what I see:

Far from being The One, far from being an empty populist on a par with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, all I see is a gutless wonder going the way of Ned Lamont, someone being told by his focus groups and other staffers to tone down his message as if he was some flaming liberal to begin with, someone too afraid to do anything but counterpunch.

When McCain goes on the attack then pats himself on the back for attacking without advancing his own positions, here’s what Obama ought to do:

Contact Robert Greenwald from Brave New Films, have him do some attack ads for the Obama campaign but here’s what they do instead of attacking McCain for whatever strengths his asshat supporters insist on seeing: Have Greenwald play over and over again McCain’s every gaffe, the Iraq/Pakistan border, the shipping hot water to dehydrated babies, the killing Iranian civilians with cancer joke, everything.

Stick to the facts, damn McCain with his own idiotic, spittle-flecked words.

But Obama won’t do that because Barack Obama still insists on believing in his Pollyanna world that politics is some gentlemanly sport played by men in starched shirtsleeves and handlebar moustaches, in which the Marquis of Queensbury still is the final arbiter over what is or isn’t permissible.

And that attitude is what will lose Obama this election unless he smartens the fuck up, because he insists on pandering to right wingers who not only can’t but won’t be pleased or satisfied, because he insists on believing that McCain will not kneecap him like Tonya Harding’s goons.