And the really appalling thing is that they never saw him coming.
Maybe not all, but certainly some Clinton supporters, like Ferraro, for whom (apologies to Ralph Ellison) Barack is "invisible." However you want to say it, a cipher, a pretender, the candidate from the back of the bus.
By no means is that a point of view confined to white Clinton supporters, though. I spent some time going door to door for Barack, on election day, in mostly black neighborhoods. I never saw one white face come to the door, all day.
The overwhelming majority of people I talked to were positive, or at least hopeful about his chances, but there were also some emphatic nay-sayers. "His name's Barack
Hussein Obama," one big dude told me, "I'm for Hillary."
'I want to win, we need to get the Republicans out of there,' is what I would have expected him to say if we'd spoken longer. I certainly didn't have a sense of any deep antipathy to Obama. There was an echo of a frustrated howl of disappointment, in fact. A recognition that, "it's not fair, they won't play fair." His bottom line, "I'm for Hillary," seemed to me to be his best stab at putting a positive spin on the situation, with a finality that precluded further discussion. Or any loose talk of "hope."
Put that dynamic into the context of the cable channels' constant spinning of both candidates chances.
It's like some sort of disorienting, tumbling, roller coaster, "yo-yo" effect.
Yesterday it seemed to me that the media people must keep turning over rocks, to find sopmeone who will feed them an anti-Hillary sound bite. I wasn't sure she was still with us, but yesterday it was first generation feminist Germaine Greer. She was quoted as saying Hillary was "cold, bossy and manipulative." (Those words resonated in my head, so that's the exact quote. Four words, short and to the point, intended to confirm everyone's worst fears about Hillary.) Nancy Pelosi must have gotten less camera time, because I still haven't seen what she said.
The steady stream of endorsements, and anti-endorsements, the good news and bad news for the candidates of our choice is
intended to make our heads explode, exceeding the physical threshold there, for "matter" and "anti-matter." At the same time that they're routinely trashing one candidate or the other, the cable news channels are lovin' their other responsibility -- talking up the likely possibilities by which Hillary can still pull it off, and Barack might lose.
Nothing's more fun for (whoever it is that's scripting the cable news narrative) than telling us the nomination may not be decided "until right up to the convention, because Hillary has such strong support in all those {areas that
count.}"
Yesterday, with the 20+ point win for Obama in Mississippi, all they could focus on was how poorly Barack did among white, male voters. Like it was Springtime for Hillary -- and Germany; Win-ter, for Michelle and Barack. Catastrophic bad news, because...
They never talked about "because", or tried to probe deeper into those troubling numbers.
But this is the context, as I see it:
- There's still some peckerwoods left in the south. (Go figure.)
and/or
- Some folks just thought Hillary might have a better shot.
But the talking heads are always careful to avoid casting
both of our candidates in a positive light, in the same context.
D.U.'er McCamy Taylor recently quoted Santayana to say, "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
But if that's true, you'd have to ask why aren't the military geniuses who built the Maginot Line buried at
Les Invalides, up and a little to the right from Napoleon?
There's another truism that says "preparing to re-fight the battles of the last war isn't always the safest preparation."
In 1968 and 1972, our side had nothing like the disastrous record of The Worst President Ever, to oppose. Whoever our nominee is, the Other Side's couldn't have screwed up any more royally. By trying to write off the cost of a "likely, quick victory in Iraq," on the cheap, they've compounded the original mistake. Through the miracle of compound interest (principally owed to overseas creditors) the "100-year struggle in Iraq became something we could no longer afford, three or four years ago. The economy's so totally messed up our kids' kids will still be paying it off, decades from now. And let's just hope it's not their responsibility, too, to restore America's good name, and international reputation.
No amount of digital sleight-of-hand, or cable news cycle up and down yo-yo'ing, is going to change that.
In the past 3 or 4 election cycles, our side hasn't always had the means to affect the prevailing, dominant media narrative. Only now, more than ever, accurate, intelligent information really is going to count as "ammunition."
Unlike past years, this time we do have Keith, Jon and Stephen, and a few others. It's been great to see a little more diversity among the frequently re-appearing talking heads, with Eugene Robinson, Clarence Page, Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz really scoring some good points.
I know there are others, once in a while someone from
The Nation will get on, but what's most encouraging is that sometimes even a Republican will pop off and surprise you with the truth. At least on foreign policy, and it's effect on the economy. That's in large part what Ron Paul's candidacy was all about.
For whatever it's worth, however responsibly we choose to carry out the assignment, we've also got the "netroots" -- each other.