If we here at the 'Kos continue to allow the Cable News to drive our conversation here, we will miss what is really happening in America.
I am a touring Live Concert Sound Engineer. When I am not on the road, I find it increasingly easy to fall into a most destructive habit....Namely, watching too much (all) of the Corporate Media's alternate reality from the mouths of Pundits. The drivel and lies that they speak I prefer to call PUNDIRT. It has a decidedly negative effect on my system. Mainly, I end up pissed off all of the time.
What's all this have to do with Susan Eisenhower?
Well, follow me below the fold to find out.
TeeVee isn't reality, and Pundirt isn't fact...
You see, America is a big place, and things are happening that isn't reflected in the Pundirt.
Why do I get sucked into the wet sticky mud of Pundirt?
I guess it is a leftover of the early primary's, and before that, the early days of the first KO Special Comments. Back then, I was just so damn excited to actually hear something resembling the truth on TeeVee!
After 6 years of being lied too, and having Pundirt stuffed in my ears, it seemed like there was an alternate reality taking place outside of my life in the rest of the country. I mean, I was seriously starting to question whether I was somehow some kind of idiot that was just divorced from reality. I didn't understand what made Bill Clinton so "loved" in the "Democratic Party". I didn't understand what made Tom Delay more "American" than me, and I didn't, (and still don't) understand why John Kerry and his "surrogates" didn't just say straight to the Republicans that they were 'effin LIARS when they were spewing all of that stuff in '04 about him "not really being wounded" in Viet Nam.
So fast forward to the Primary Season. Keith has been giving Special Comments for a while now. I am starting to think that he actually might read Daily Kos from time to time. It is almost November of 2007, and Obama is barely moving in the "Polls". Once again, I am getting BURIED IN PUNDIRT.
Hillary is running the "Textbook Campaign"...She is ahead by 30 pts Nationwide, and John Edwards is the only one that is going to give her any kind of a race, expecially in Iowa. Obama was a "flash in the pan"...the "Democratic Establishment" was going to crush him according to Chris Matthews. Blah..Blah...Blah.
I mean really, just think back to what it was like!
Then IOWA HAPPENED!!
This is when I Totally LOST IT!
I was off the road, and I watched every single stump speech that Barack gave in the next week in NH. I saw the crowds, I watched Barack lose his voice giving three to five stump speeches a day. Racing from one event to the next, I was completely sucked in to the "campaign" on TeeVee. I found The CNN Live Feed Link, which meant that I didn't have to miss a single solitary speech! I was a political Junkie in Heaven! As I watched the week leading up to NH, I saw something that was very disturbing though. He was only giving Speeches. He wasn't allowing people to ask him questions or get to know him. I even said to my Girlfriend at the time that,"Barack's fuckin' up. He's gonna lose NH because he isn't doing any of the things that won him Iowa".....
And I was Right.
I noticed something else too.....
It caught every single Pundit on TeeVee by suprise! I mean NONE OF THEM SAW IT! They were all completely flabergasted that their Pundirt, wich had been piled in truckloads of BullShit all week long could be so wrong.
I remember Chris Matthews even speculating that something "wasn't right", as if their polling was right, but the election results were wrong?
Which brings me to the bottom line of this diary, and the reason for the title.
Ike's Granddaughter Calls Obama 'Future of America'
I remember when she came out in support of Barack last February. It was a little 'Big Deal', but not really. She has now reafirmed her support of him.
"I don't know how much you know about my grandfather's administration," Eisenhower said. "But that administration stood for multilateral engagement, balancing the budget. They were the party of civil rights, they were the party of environmental progress. That was the Republican Party of the 1950s. I think you can make the case that doesn't sound like the Republican Party we know today. If you look at the way Obama's run his campaign, to how Hillary Clinton ran her campaign, or even how John McCain's campaign is shaping up -- you can definitely say that Obama's running his campaign in a way an Eisenhower Republican would have run his campaign.
"He raises a lot of money," Eisenhower, 56, said, by way of explaining the similarities she sees between her grandfather and the likely Democratic nominee. "He has very little debt. I just love it. Anybody who wants to make him out as this wide-eyed liberal -- I just don't see any evidence for that, not in the way he runs his campaign. And this tells you a lot about how he can administer things, how he manages things, how he deals with situations.
"This race is very similar to the 1952 campaign that brought my grandfather to power," Eisenhower said, continuing the comparison. "He was an outsider who was nominated by the Republican Party -- but it was not an easy process at all. He was an outsider who threatened to shake up the party itself."
You see, I have to remind myself that no matter WHAT these idiots spew on TeeVee, or how much PUNDIRT is shoveled and thrown around to bury reality, that there is something Happening in America, and it's not just my Imagination.