Flex wrote:I'd agree with Spiff on Obama's subtle but actually existing class conscious language. He's one of the few candidates I can think of to bluntly and directly point out that there's a rich minority, most of us ain't them, and they need to be fought. Most candidates do their best to make you think you're part of that minority, and the us versus them talk is, like, special interest lobbyists and stuff ruining everything.
I've mentioned this book to eumaas, but I highly recommend you read
The Last Campaign (author's name eludes me) that came out this spring. It's about Robert Kennedy's '68 campaign. The good stuff about Obama you'll see in Kennedy's campaign (and vice versa, I guess). (It's also a cockpunch of a book as you follow him on the campaign trail knowing that he's a dead man. RFK's '68 campaign is pretty much a perfect encapsulation of both my idealism for working for a common good, that selflessness in our private lives is a virtue, but also my cynicism that genuinely decent people never cross the finish line.) I'm hoping that Obama is more like the Bobby Kennedy who campaigned in '68, a liberated guy who did impolitic things because he thought it was right (e.g., taking reporters to see the disgusting poverty on reservations not because it would gain him votes but because he knew the issue would at least gain press coverage), rather than the Bobby Kennedy before '68, who didn't rock the boat. I confess that part of why I like Obama is because Robert Kennedy is as close to a hero as I have, and I'm hoping like fuck that Obama gets it the way Bobby got it. Irrational, perhaps, but it's there.
Addendum: And Palin? I liked Keith Olbermann's quote "if you like that sort of thing, it's the sort of thing you'll like." So much for the pledges by republicans to take the high road during the convention.
Olbermann's become more than a bit insufferable over the past few months, but he does have the gift for a good quip.
Speaking of coded messages, I assume the whole dumping on community organizers, while obviously an attack on Obama's credentials, is also an attack on the poor. I mean, the reason these organizations exist is because government funding in the US and Canada dried up, so it's mostly in private hands now, existing one grant app to the next. And Republicans are attacking that? What principles are actually sacrosanct in that party anymore?
