Staying on messageObama’s Keating offensive comes after McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, spent two days telling voters, donors and reporters that Obama showed poor judgment in his relationship with the former radical William Ayers. McCain’s campaign has vowed to make a major issue of Obama’s Chicago relationships in coming days, with a senior McCain official telling Politico that they are “the vehicle that allows us to question Obama’s truthfulness about his past and his plans for the future.” The McCain campaign also plans to invoke money launderer Tony Rezko. Officials say they will not bring up Obama's former minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, because McCain has forbidden his campaign from using that as an attack. But the officials said outside groups supporting McCain might highlight Wright. Responding to the Keating blast from the past, a Republican official said the Obama team seemed "frantic" at "the mere mention of the word 'Ayers.'" - PoliticoDavid Seaton's News Links
Now the Republicans are taking the only path they have left, which is to attack the personality of Barack Obama, and I think Obama is making a mistake to use the Keating affair to attack McCain. This is very old news, it would be like attacking Hillary Clinton at this stage of the game, by asking, "when Bill was playing with his cigar, what did Hillary know and when did she know it?".
Obama should stick to (quoting Bill) "the economy stupid". Getting down in the mud with the Republicans, Obama has everything to lose and nothing to gain.
As to the economy it is now China's move. Here is an excerpt from an interesting article by analyst M R Venkatesh:
It may be noted that the Chinese, unlike the others, have always questioned the global order with the US at the helm of affairs. And the Chinese accumulation of forex reserves is surely a strategy that perhaps has an ominous side to it. All this is not pure economics as it is made out to be. Rather, it was and remains a well-planned economic, political and military strategy of the Chinese. And in a way it is the mirror image of the Star Wars programme that the then US President Reagan unleashed on the erstwhile USSR in the early eighties that eventually bankrupted the later within a few years as it engaged in competitive arms build-up with the former. Statecraft is all about engaging other countries at one's own terms, pace, time and cost. This is what the US did to the USSR in the eighties and succeeded in dynamiting that country. And that is what China could do to a vulnerable US in the coming months. Crucially, if it doesn't, from the Chinese perspective it might well rue this moment forever.Anyone who reads Sun Tzu and Mao could tell for some time that China's objective, after the fall of the Soviet Union left them facing America alone, has been to get the USA by the short and curlies... and that seems to be just what they have done. They hold the US economy in the palm of their hand. They have a police state with which to control civil disturbance in a great economic upheaval and they could ride it out to be "the last man standing"... as the article says, if they don't do it, they may live to regret it.
So, in the next few days, we may see breathtaking things on the world economic front, an undreamed of humiliation of America's brand and Obama cannot afford to get off message: ES (economy stupid) ES, ES, ES and ES.
Leave the mud to the Republicans because they have had all of what they are going to spring in the next few days prepared for months. It will be impossible to match it smear for smear. What we are going to see very shortly is every old girlfriend, every old tape, every old dossier: the objective being to be in Bradley distance of Barack Obama in the key states on election day.
This is the time for Obama to be noble, inspiring, nonpartisan and reassuring. His message to the American people as they drive through the car wash with their windows down should be in essence "don't cry, come sit on daddy's lap and let him kiss it and make it well".
This is the time for Obama to be his most emulsifant, emulgent, effulgent and indulgent. If he wants to win this thing he must bring reassurance and comfort to the voters... not get caught in a shit tossing contest.
The next few days in the world of reality, what I call the "car wash", are going to be dreadful, horrible, terrifying...
The one who can communicate to the voters calm, strength and comfort to all that labor and are heavy laden, and give them rest... will win this thing.
If Obama can manage to do that, he might even get my vote. DS
3 comments:
The end must be near Dave, you're getting soft. Imagine even hinting that Obama may be the man for the job of pacifying, which I have pointed out from day one. McCain should have been the grandfatherly presence, but between his bizarro wife, his frightening twitches and his plain nastyness, he is only reassuring to crackers due to his merciful lack of the dread toxin - melanin. I read that article on China too and sent it to Nulan at Subrealism. I agree that the Chinese have calculated that if they pull the plug, the US will go down the drain first. But for now, it's already blackmail time.
It is far too late for McCain. Obama got the slime job from the Clintons and it didn't work. Not enough undecideds still undecided either this late in the game. Ding!
Thank you for playing!
I wouldn't count my chickens just yet. I think that in the next few days all the stuff the Republicans have been collecting on Obama is going to start bubbling up like swamp gas and some of it is going to be quite deadly. So deadly that if he manages to win despite it, half of the electorate will never consider him a legitimate president and we will be worse than when we started this farce.
If Obama is given a chariot ride at the inauguration by heavenly hosts, half of the electorate won't like it or him, so that is where we are at. I live in a very divided pseudo country {a colony} and the winner often wins by only a sliver of a percentage, and the parties are very tribal and do not appreciate the talents of the opposition. This is a rare year in that one candidate {we are talking about PR, not the US} is way out ahead of the other, and probably only because the incumbent is facing dozens of counts on a US Federal indictment for election fraud from eight years ago.
If {in the US} half of the electorate are not even deserving of the franchise due to low neuron activity, there isn't much the rest of the population can do about it. And if McCain should weasel in there, there will be a different half wishing to spit upon him. What is a Democracy to do? We already know the capabilities of the Republican snuff squads, we saw them during the Clinton years. But they are pathetic and pussy {as in pus}
now, not the mammon maniacs they once were.
Yet, unlike you, I do not see them fading. You have forgotten that in the USA shame and failure no longer lead to permanent banishment. They are just the interim handicaps that may be soon thrown off as the flayed ones grow new and thicker, more reptilian skin, find some flavor of salvation and are forgiven by a nation of such deluded souls, equally willing to forgive themselves and others or simply to forget the transgressions because they do not understand what treachery is. Really, in the case of political parties in the USA, so little is expected that the Republicans will probably be back in the majority by 2010. Do you really imagine that the Democrats can possibly pull a rabbit out of this abysmal economic hat? Just look at the complete lack of any understanding or cunning in the Congress over the last two weeks of the Paulson assault on the Treasury. But do not mistake this statement as an endorsement of Republicanism. Certainly not.
Finally, I'm not counting the chickens yet, just studying the poll trends and noting that the remaining sand grains are very few.
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