It's the tactics, stupid

The similarities between Bush and Obama:

• Both were charismatic to their core base.
• Both ran as centrists, then picked far right/left VP’s to appease their base (This one assumes Obama picks Dodd as VP)
• Both promised change in politics, both ran as politics as usual
• Both of them had a core base of supporters who followed their guy no matter what he said or did. Both men’s followers did not follow their candidate because of core, substansive issues, but because of charisma and gut feelings. He’s a great speaker! He’s the type of guy you want to have a beer with!
• Both have relatively little experience to run on.

So please tell me when the real change comes along? The change that gets the voters electing a president based on real issues, not feel-good bullshit?
While I will vote for him as I believe a McCain administration would be horrific, I do fear that in the long run, Obama will not be good for this country if he continues his current behavior of selling out his base. A majority of the people who voted for Bush did so because he campaigned as a moderate, with the wink towards the radicals that implied he was only doing this to get elected and he’d really side with them when his time came. I don’t care what you believe, that tactic is wrong, wrong, wrong, and ultimately destructive to the nation.

Obama set himself up as an agent of change to politics as usual. Therefore he made the bar higher on himself. I didn't do that to him, he did it to himself.

Cross posted to Pandora's Politics.

Late-Term Abortion Cures What Ails You!

Plucked from the Slog, originally ABC news:

"Speaking to reporters on his campaign plane, Obama said mental health exceptions—which are a real battleground issue in the abortion debate—can be “rigorously” limited to only those women with “serious clinical mental health diseases.” He said mental health exceptions are not intended permit abortions when a woman simply “doesn’t feel good.”

“It is not just a matter of feeling blue,” Obama said."

Whoa. A woman who's feeling blue will just decided to terminate her 6+ month pregnancy? I find that horribly insulting. This is the type of latent sexism that still permeates this country. A woman's moody, and might do something she'll later regret, so we have to pass a law against it.

Abortion is an absolute deal breaker for me and language like this seriously starts pissing me off.

Current Obama stance: Will be holding my nose to vote for him. McCain is far worse and I'm well aware of that, but I won't be sending money as of right now.

This was supposed to be our (Dems) fun campaign. Thanks a lot BO.

Obamaniacs, I think you got had

Obama clarifies remarks on Iraq withdrawal timeline

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama today said he would "refine" his position on withdrawal from Iraq after meeting with military commanders there this summer, then later insisted he had not softened his commitment to remove US combat forces with 16 months of taking office.

Speaking with reporters at an airport in Fargo, North Dakota, the Illinois senator appeared open to altering his campaign pledge to have US combat troops home from Iraq within 16 months of taking office.

"I am going to do a thorough assessment when I'm there,'' he said. "I'm sure I'll have more information and continue to refine my policy."

So disillusioning, so fast.

Still with holding the "I told you so", but ...

Tough Stuff

From Maureen Dowd's NYT Op-Ed entitled The Wrong Stuff:

He’s an American who has climbed to the most rarefied stratosphere of American life, only to find that he has to make a major speech arguing that he loves his country. (A new CNN poll shows that a quarter of registered voters say Obama lacks patriotism.)

He’s a man happily married to a strong professional woman who has to defend his wife, as he says, for being “feisty.”

He must simultaneously defend himself for being too exotic and, because of recent moves, too conventional.

Don't get me wrong, I feel for the guy. Navigating the morass of a general election is tough stuff. I just have never felt he had the right stuff--yet--to do it. That's one reason why I backed HRC in this particular election. Maybe after she had the opportunity to unfuck the Bush Administration's mess, we could have had an Obama to come in and enact his "real change."

My fiance says it this way, regarding his support for HRC:

"It took a dynasty to create this mess, it'll take a dynasty to unfuck it."

Sigh, the next few months will be very interesting. I hope I'm just being overly pessimistic.

It's been a long while since I've blogged regularly, so it's going to take a week or two to get back into the swing of it. However, this article pretty much says what I have always feared would happen with Barak Obama.

How Do You Like Him Now?

Here's the "too much to 'splain so I'll sum up" quote:

He has made his calculation. He believes the liberal base, after eight years of chafing under Bush and presented with his historic candidacy and a great shot at winning the White House, will ... gleefully throw themselves under his bus.
He's probably right.

Comments are interesting. Particularly the ones along this vein:

• "Change doesn't come all at once. We have to take it one step at a time ..."
  
• "Progress comes in drips, not floods."
  
• "... compared to McInsane, I have no probs with him."
  

I thought Obama wasn't supposed to be about small change, small steps, small progression. He was supposed to be about REAL CHANGE! CHANGE NOW! A NEW WAY! This is why Hillary couldn't have the nomination. Because she was about incremental change, and political expediency, and ambition, and running to the center to court the independents. All that was BAD BAD BAD because golden boy was the REAL DEAL who was going to change everything.

So what happened?

Now it's ok to sacrifice principle for the ambition to the presidency because Barak Obama does it? It's ok to pander to the right by supporting Bush's FISA bill because Obama does it? God forbid HRC made a bad decision on the war when the information provided was false. She is forever to be hated for that. But it's ok to spy on American citizens without a warrant because GOD-BLESSED BARAK OBAMA is ok with it?

And faith-based initiatives are now the new black? Because Obama supports it? Oh it's different because it's Obama. It's not the continued erosion of the separation of church and state because Obama would never let that happen. His way will be ok because he says so.

And wait, I thought Obama was about not being beholden to special interests, yet he rejects public financing. Which means he's completely beholden to the folks who contribute to his campaign. Do his blind supporters really think that their five dollar pennies in a basket are what he's after? Did they miss his courting of HRC's major money supporters? So it was bad when Hillary was beholden to big money contributors but it's good when Barak is?

Listening to Obama-niacs is making me seriously question the rules of reason and logic. They got their boy in, and now no matter how he turns his back on them, it's ok. Even though we could have had an experienced/intelligent/highly connected/powerful panderer/ambition machine in HRC, we had to have the same thing in a person without any experience, voting record, or history of successful endeavours. I'm not getting that.

I will be watching. On November 1 I will decide if I'm voting at all. Right now I of course am. But if this trend continues, I may, for the first time, not vote in an election. I'm being a bit dire at this point, but signs are disturbing.