I'll leave aside the praise for Obama's speech. That much is easily handled by the front pagers and the others around here. I just want to inject a little bit of reality into things, as much of a damper as it might be:
The Fight on Offshore Drilling Isn't Over Yet.
As strongly as Obama came down on the issue in his speech, one of the things I immediately noticed in some of the aftermath coverage on MSNBC, between the adulation of most of the personalities was a certain ad. One that directly undermined Obama's call against Offshore Drilling, funded by the American Petroleum Institute, calling for what is essentially McCain's energy policy instead: "DRILL HERE, DRILL NOW!"
It's not just the ad that's the problem. The fact of the matter is, groups like API and others have a presence not only on the air, through these ads, they had a presence on the floor of Convention as well.
In essence, it was a dissonant presence in what was supposed to be a pretty incredible night for Obama and Democrats in general. It made me realize that while Obama's set out the line in the sand on all these issues, drilling included, we're still losing the ground on this in particular.
Remember that Pelosi herself essentially gave the green light for CYA votes on this to placate the masses, still deluded into thinking that offshore drilling with reap immediate dividends and benefits, thanks in part to the disinformation campaign by Republicans, and outfits like API themselves. We're still being sold a placebo, even under our noses during the coverage of the very convention where we got to see clear, powerful speeches against the same corporate interests which fuel this false debate and pablum shilling.
It makes me realize that we still need to fight on this. We need to make sure that our Democrats take the example of Obama and show that drilling isn't an energy plan, it's a stop-gap. It's a band aid on a bullet wound, one that covers up the problem, but doesn't keep it from bleeding out. We need people to show that the energy debate has no more place for crap like API is selling.
Now unfortunately, I'm not sure if we'll get the chance to get that message across the Democratic Leaders. But considering the impact Obama had tonight with his acceptance speech, the chance should be there. We need to get out the message and be vocal in that we can't afford to hinge our hopes on letting the oil companies dig into more land, when they're already ignoring swaths of leased land they have on hand, when they're the only ones profiting off our energy woes, when they're the only reason this offshore drilling debate is a debate at all.
We need to make sure that groups like API can't undermine the messages Obama's already sent out there tonight. We need to make sure that our leaders, unlike McCain, API, Exxon, Hess, etc. not only care, but 'get it'.
We can't let 'guests' like API and other energy lobbyist groups undercut us, not when we have so much going right now.