Enough about Sarah-cuda. More about "I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear...." More about Obama fist-bumping Michelle, Malia and Sasha in victory up Pennsylvania Avenue in the January cold.
We have had a lot of heat and fire here over Governor Palin's candidacy for Vice-President. And heat and fire are not such a bad thing in moderation. But enough is enough.
Because she's the "new hotness" in multiple senses, we have been freaking out here, following scandal after scandal. The news media are doing a pretty good job of seeing through this home-grown petty tyrant, newly-elected governor of a tiny state (if you count people and not tundra or mosquitoes) and mother of five.
When we are going after Palin, it feels like we are on offense. After all, we get fired up, it's exciting, we see interesting things happening. It's somewhat unusual to have a female Republican opponent, and it's somewhat unusual perhaps for some of us to let loose aggression against a female political opponent. So we have been indulging a strange experience, perhaps into occasional sexist excess and indecent intrusion into her complex family life, etc.
But when we are going after Palin, we are playing DEFENSE, not offense. It's like we are in a bunker, and a drunk-driven tank approaches. Surely, tactically, we hit it with anti-tank fire. Good job. But when we have pummeled the tank, melted the tank, the enemy is still moving around us. We are not advancing. We smell the smoke and get giddy from the hyper-adrenaline, but in the end, we are still ass-in-the-trench, not moving.
In the words of General George Patton, "L'audace, toujours l'audace!" - Boldness, always boldness! We should be moving forward with the audacity of hope, to turn a phrase. ;-) We should be advancing the ball, not stopping Team McCain at 4th and 3. We should be talking about how to win the hearts of our relatives, our co-workers (within propriety and the applicable laws.)
We should be talking about how to organize an Obama party, official or unofficial, for fundraising or volunteer building. We should be talking about how to leaflet, how to help with GOTV, how to work a phone bank, how to MANAGE a phone bank or a team of volunteers. How to do a lit drop. How much coffee to buy for a team of volunteers who will be slush-drenched in the colder states in late October.
Now the campaigns (plural: we need to win more than one race, goddammit) will help with a lot of these things, but they may not always be as deep as would be ideal in volunteers. Maybe Senate candidate, say, Hagan, the Democrat seeking to decapitate the wounded Liddy Dole in North Carolina, has strength in bluer counties and in Charlotte but less in the countryside. Perhaps you can be that knowledgeable organizer where it's harder to reach.
Maybe you, like me, live in DC or Maryland. While Obama owns probably every precinct in DC and owns Maryland by a substantial margin, Virginia and Pennsylvania are swing states. PA is looking pretty good but only a fool would take any vote there for granted, even with Joe Biden's strength. Virginia will not dye itself blue; we need to dip that purple badboy into the dye the hard way.
Are you God, omniscient and omnipotent? No? Then you can learn. Are you an ignoramus or stupid? No? Of course not. Then you know some things and can teach slow learners like me what experience has taught you about political action.
The swing states are close. The stakes are incredibly high. McCain is incredibly committed to expanded war. War means dead soldiers and sailors on fool's errands. No military death is meaningless; all represent sacrifices out of love of country. But it's our job, not the military personnel, to make sure that stupid warlike bastards with bad advisers not squander our Republic's soft power down a bloody, tragic drain for four more years. We should take it as seriously as a Marine gunnery sergeant takes her responsibilities.
You believe in public transit? Well, a Chicago-resident Senator and a daily Amtrak commuter will deliver what a bitter Amtrak foe and the governor of a largely Arctic wasteland state will. You believe in separation of James Dobson and state? Well, McCain is Faust and Palin is the Lucifer's own on that point.
Point is, none of this has anything to do with goofy bullshit about Northern Exposure or teenage sex or Trooper firings or small-town library bullshit run out of a city hall that looks like a tattoo parlor from the front door. It's time to inflict casualties on their campaign, and we do that by winning hearts, minds and actual deliverable votes, not by being fascinated by an evangelical Tracy Flick.
Toujours l'audace! Aux armes!