Yesterday, I wrote a diary arguing that Obama is leaving a lot of points on the field by failing to do the equivalent of throwing inside, meaning simply pointing out McCain’s really gross self-contradictions (strongly implying lies), on such important issues as Military Affairs (on which he has regularly voted against veterans and improved equipment for soldiers in the field - who, by the way, majority poll for Obama), and on the Iraq War (on which the issue I am discussing isn’t so much his wrong positions as his lying about what those positions were in order to make it look like he was opposed all along when the clear truth is that he was a cheerleader all along), and on being a maverick (on which virtually, or maybe completely, he has essentially rescinded all his previous positions in opposition to the Republican Party in favor of caving to Republican orthodoxy in order to get the nomination), and, maybe worst of all, resorting to the ugly campaign tactics which defeated him in South Carolina in 2000, maybe the worst of which are the extraordinarily un-democratic vote-suppression tactics such as caging and numerous other techniques which are more than well documented.
As I was conceiving it, the idea was not to dump all this stuff out there all at once, but to be ready to use one or more of the particulars as the opportunity and/or the subject matter presented itself, as, for example, Obama did by pointing out all the wrong positions McCain had taken on the Iraq war; and, most importantly, the ATTITUDE I had in mind was not harsh and angry or even personal or intended to destroy - but rather, as the citation to Truman was intended to express: not that he gave them Hell, but (simply) that he told the truth, and they thought it was Hell.
I was surprised at the response, the main theme of which seemed to me largely to analogize Obama with Jackie Robinson, who had to close to totally suppress his personality in order to smash the color barrier as the first pioneer to do so. I didn’t have an answer to this yesterday, but I woke up with one today, as is hinted at above:
One of Obama’s most praised gestures in the debate was his list of SPECIFIC wrong policy positions that McCain had taken on Iraq. My thought in writing the diary was really just for Obama, when McCain leads with his chin by asserting one of those gross lies, to be able to list all the obvious refutations from McCain’s actual record mentioned above, which I strongly believe would offend virtually any non-drinker of the poisoned Republican Kool-Aid, which (non-drinker category) I believe would include the "independent" AND "low information" voters who apparently will decide this election -- and, the immediate post-debate polling and focus group analysis (not to mention the contemporaneous line during the debate) seems to bear this out.
This does not require Obama or his campaign to become "angry Black men" or harsh or to engage in gutter, dirty or "negative" campaigning. It is not subjective, it is not a smear and it is not irrelevant. It is simply the truth, as indeed Obama’s presentation of McCain’s list of pro-war positions were; and, since these things reveal the depths of McCain’s mendacity, dishonesty and double-dealing in a way anyone can understand, it is devastating.
I do not underestimate the deep roots of racism in the American electorate (which is maybe one of the reasons, along with the Republican vote suppression and fraud machine, that we want a 25% lead in the polls); but I came to realize, when I saw how extraordinarily popular a Colin Powell candidacy was in the polls (with him resisting the phenomenon all the way), that, to an extent I don’t believe we have imagined, that history has lost its power - and I think we are seeing that in the current basic weakness of the Republican campaign adds to get mileage out of it -- kind of like Chauncey Gardner trying to fend off an actual, real-life physical attack on the street by repeatedly pressing a button on the TV remote he always carried with him, and being totally nonplused by the experience of not being able to change the reality in front of him the way he can change the channel when watching TV. In other words, we don’t have to be bullied by the past bullies, because: "Yes, we can!"
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