Obama is like an unbelievably talented baseball pitcher who is afraid to pitch inside, or, as they say in baseball, to throw a brush-back pitch. The reason for such fear is that: (1) it runs the danger of engendering serious hostility, and (2) it could really hurt the batter; and the problem with not throwing it is that, in a game where the pitcher’s main weapon is his ability to control the pitch’s speed, trajectory, movement during its course, and (especially) location, and where the batter has only a split second to calculate all these variables, decide what to do and then do it, the pitcher who does not pitch inside is, as they say, conceding half the plate (and in fact much more in that it greatly reduces all the variables the batter has to calculate); but, specifically as to Obama, the problem is that it fails to reveal profound truths that would shock fair minded independent voters into seeing what is really going on here, the effect of which could only be to elect the righteous candidates we support.
Continuing the baseball analogy (and since one of the most important aspects of the phenomenon in any case is what is known in baseball as "control"), the most instructive example (albeit somewhat off base, so to speak) is that of Sandy Koufax, considered by many to be the finest or greatest pitcher of the modern era, or at least the equal of anybody in that category. I’ve read an interview with the scout who first discovered Koufax who spoke of Koufax’s fast ball (when he first saw it) as a kind of religious experience; but, for a number of years, Koufax was close to useless in actual games, because he didn’t have enough "control" to avoid walking so many batters and getting so frustrated about it that he simply couldn’t get enough good pitches across the plate to get enough people out.
I just haven’t been able to think of the guys who either did learn to "come inside" and by doing so fulfilled their promise, or didn’t and consequently faded; but I imagine real baseball people could fairly easily call them up. In any case, after a few years, for whatever reason, when Koufax finally learned "control", he became essentially un-hittable, and spent close to 10 years or so with the lowest earned run averages in the history of the game.
Obama, apparently out of the intent to maintain the high road (which, as President Clinton points out about independent voters and, as the snap polls from last night appear to bear out, is a very good strategy), and apparently stemming from the same personality traits that caused him to be successful at Harvard Law Review in getting the massive egos and chasms of disagreement there to come together, and which could make him a historically effective politician, has failed to capitalize on the massive opportunities McCain has given him to deliver knockout blows all over the place.
McCain, by grossly lying about almost everything under the sun despite massive, undeniable, video and other documentary evidence of those lies, leads with his chin, and Obama just doesn’t pick up the easy candy McCain is leaving strewn around with which to hit that chin with points that would be truly devastating.
There are videos out there which have been compiled showing McCain saying one thing and then exactly the opposite. His record of opposing Republican Party positions (on which he is staking so much) is either completely or almost completely directly contradicted by positions he has subsequently taken (in plain sight on the record) to run for President this cycle. His endless stream of recorded votes against measures that would benefit both on-duty soldiers (for example, by improving their equipment, by lengthening their time between tours, by improving their access to post-battle health care, by restoring their G. I. Bill benefits) makes his last speech at the end of the debate last night completely shameful and any fair minded person would be shocked to see the depths of immorality that this reveals, as is also the case with McCain’s positions on the Iraq War.
On that (the Iraq War), it is extremely important to note NOT so much that he was wrong on it from the beginning; but the important thing is that, from about late 2006 or so, he has been grossly lying about those positions, falsely stating on the record that he took positions previous to his conversion which are precisely the reverse of the positions he actually took. Also, as Chris Matthews pointed out so strongly last night talking with Robert Gibbs, it should not be "old fashioned" to point out the specifics of the economic suffering that is being felt not only by middle class workers but, critically importantly, by businesses, both large and small.
The most keening specific I know about can be illustrated easily by a chart comparing GDP (going up and up and up) vs. actual people’s incomes during the same period, which have been basically as flat as you can get. This also is shocking; but Chris ran off a long list of specifics which I can’t remember, but which included the unemployment rate, the foreclosure rate, the individual debt load, and a lot more of the measuring rods which normal, regular people are used to using to gauge the health of our society and which it is the sacred duty of our political leaders to articulate IN SPECIFICS.
Another of the most keening specifics is the massive disadvantage (and in many cases, make or break economic burdens) suffered by both big and small businesses in our country (as well of course as individuals) is the extraordinary cost of health care, playing out not only in the cost of premiums (for both employers and employees), but in lost productivity, and personal and family economic calamity, a monster competitive disadvantage un-matched by anything else in the rest of world, developed or undeveloped (and, in the developed world, of course, the universal remedy has been essentially single payer health care - with whatever disadvantages that may have being completely pale in contrast with the mess we have here). Isn’t it clear that, if small and medium sized business begins to see the horrible disadvantages that have been placed upon them by the Republican mistaken policies poured into concrete in their name, that that would represent the essential tectonic political shift toward progressive politics that we all have been looking for?
People these days have been remembering lately what Harry Truman said when encouraged to "Give ‘em Hell, Harry": (words to the effect of) I don’t give ‘em Hell; I just tell the truth and they think it’s Hell.
If the truth is really sacred, and since it is so clearly on our side, at least at this point in history, it is sacrilege NOT to press it out through to the electorate, past the massive filters set up to block it, filters not only of the reactionary fear of entrenched interests, corporate and otherwise, but also of personal revulsion against "negative campaigning".
Negative campaigning is Swift Boating smears, i.e., the "Big Lie" technique articulated by Goebbels and many others. It is NOT negative campaigning to break through to the sacred truth, and doing so will not hamper Obama’s ability to use his God-given talents for bringing disparate people together by appealing to their better Angels. Truth is a better Angel.
There’s a lot more that can be said along these lines.
END