The first excuses

It seems that once again, Democrats find themselves at the gate of failing yet another presidential election. The Obama campaign enjoys the best starting point Democrats have seen since FDR. The economy is in the tank and getting worse every month. The Republican candidate is old, slightly out of it, is personally responsible, together with his colleagues, for the worst 8 years the country has seen since the depression. The country is tired of the old and eager for change. Obama is awash with money has way more money than the Republicans.

 

Obama finished the Democratic primaries with an aura of a great communicator. He groomed and enjoyed a cult of personality we haven't seen since Reagan. Al Gore also started from a great starting point: peace, prosperity and a moron as opponent. Obama, however, enjoyed a favorable media while Gore had a hostile, lying and backstabbing media to deal with. Obama has the voice of slavish allegedly left blogosphere who support him blindly. Gore didn't have a blogosphere yet.

 

With all this in toe, Obama is tied with McCain just 60 days before the election and is losing steam. The obvious question is: why.

 

Several answers can be already given. The first huge visible mistake was the selection of Biden. Many comments to that effect were made way before Palin's selection emphasized the magnitude of the mistake. The VP is not just a number 2, the VP first and foremost is a statement. Obama either decided that he doesn't need help with the statement or was too cowardly to select a strong, independent and forceful candidate. He could have chosen Wes Clark, Janet Napolitano and of course Hillary Clinton. Obama would've never selected Hillary; we take that as a given. But Napolitano would have made Palin look like a high school student. Wes Clark has the stature to say that McCain's falling out a burning plane is not a proper qualification for the job of president. Now we long for a VP that can show how ridiculous McCain actually is.

 

Although the VP selection is a huge visible mistake, it is towered by the stupidity, emptiness and arrogance of Obama's run on postpartisanship. Broder and Nunn, two first class clowns, may love postpartisanship, but if you follow Broder who was never right and Nunn who thinks that the military cannot have gays you find yourself deep in the hole.

 

Postpartisanship assumes that the Democrats can get along with war criminals such as George W. Bush. As a result of espousing this policy, you automatically assume that there is nothing major wrong with the Republicans. If that is the case, how bad can McCain be? Really not too much.

 

Once you accept the enemies of the American people as decent human beings, you really have nothing interesting to sell. You start to be very civil, you make every argument against the Republicans seem minor and insignificant. This is where Obama is now. He was all over Wes Clark for saying that McCain is not qualified to be president. Now McCain, almost senile, out of touch, supporter of Bush cannot be beyond the pale.

 

When you compare Obama's approach to the Republican's, you start to understand why the Republicans win. For them the opposition is a bunch of criminals, deficit causers, losers, anti American, hate women, etc. It doesn't matter that they are THE deficit causers, that they lost in Iraq, couldn't care about America because they think only about the rich and almost as sexist as the Obama crowd itself.

Of course, there are many additional factors. Of course, Hillary would have evaporated McCain. But the starting point was so wrong that correction is difficult to imagine.