Explaining the difference between the two candidates

I was talking with my mom last week about the presidential campaign.  Both my parents are very active in local politics, and back in the 70s, they ended up on the local Democratic Committee and went to Jimmy Carter's inauguration.  

She was originally undecided between Obama and Hillary, but was leaning towards Hillary.  She started to come around to Obama when she saw the multitudes of faces of all colors beaming with pride and hope in campaign photos of Obama.  My mom has watched as I printed out pro-Obama and anti-McCain articles, and watched I started volunteering for the Obama campaign.

But last week, as I was gushing about Obama (and looking for some shared enthusiasm), she said "I don't think he's going to win, honey.  I wish he would, but I don't think he's going to win."  She commented on my campaign work and said she would hate to see me disappointed.  It was then I said to her, "Are you afraid to hope?"  And she gave it a thought, and said in a very honest voice, "Maybe I am."

In debate jargon, there is a term called a "Turn" where you use an opponents argument against them to effectively prove your point. It's time for Democrats to turn the energy debate in an immediate, simple and effective way.

I'm starting this diary with the assumption that magical ponies are not going to gallop out of Denver to rescue the Obama campaign.
Agreed, the Democratic party itself will be energized by the convention.  But the media coverage of Denver will invariably disappoint.
And the Vice-President choices are so controversial that the pick, when it is finally made, will generate bad press as well as good.
And then it will be September ...and no ponies to be found anywhere.
I know, I know, I can hear it already --"oh, don't worry! Mere bloggers don't understand it but of course Obama's campaign knows what they're doing!"  
But while his staff apparently are wonderful people, disciplined, loyal, knowledgeable, etc. etc, its becoming pretty clear they're in over their heads.  They've been distracted by style ("Look, Ma, no 527s!") and technique ("we have offices in 50 states!") and they've lost focus on substance.
It's time to stop with the wishful thinking.
(more after the jump)

Yes, by gum and by gosh.

And since I am grumpy I am going to share it with you.

3 things have me grumpy.

1. All this VP talk

2. All this poll talk

3. All this HRC talk

It's gotten to the point I do not even go out to the movies or show at all.

More after the break.

I have a friend who is a classic cynic when it comes to politics.  He says "one politician is as bad as another".  You know the drill: he thinks they are all corrupt, and just say anything to get elected and then enrich themselves and their friends once in office.  He is convinced that Democrats are just as guilty of this as Republicans.

So I countered by talking about Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.  But this guy doesn't benefit from any of these programs (he's uninsured--and telling him what Democrats are promising to do in the future vis-a-vis health care will not resonate as he'll just write that off as empty promises).  So what else can I throw out there in terms of tangible achievements to point to?  

No one wants to keep the Republican out of The White House more than I do.  I support Obama and I will vote for him.  

A great and inspiring congresswoman was lost today, Stephanie Tubbs Jones. The first African American woman to be in the congress from Ohio. She may not have been a Barack supporter, but I hope that everyone will take a moment to think about the enormous loss we have all sustained. She was a true democrat, opposed to the war, and a real person, who really cared about the people in her district.

I hope we can all take time over the next couple of days to remember her. An intelligent woman, who went to soon.

This is a short diary but I want to put this out there and hear what others think.
 
I keep looking at the polls and all I can think of is "Identifying with the aggressor." For those who aren't into psych stuff this term was created by Anna Freud to describes a defense mechanism that describes the behavior of some victims of abuse. Often, when a person is chronically abused or witnesses abuse, rather than accepting the status of victim, they "identify with the abuser" so that they feel strong. They ally themselves psychologically with "the strong one."
 This is very common, as admitting to having been victimized is very difficult and often causes shame and guilt.

So, with that in mind, back to politics.

Here is a link about defense mechanisms

There are apparently some liberals, and some Democrats, and some independents out there, who claim that the media is not only not "liberally biased," but that it in general slants its coverage in order to make the facts come across as less biased to the right and far right. (Most often accomplished, so this claim goes, by largely ignoring or glossing over them, but other times, by miscontruing them or simply parroting misleading arguments with little objective context.)

The hot topic lately seems to be how and why Barack Obama should be hitting John McCain with every negative attack imaginable.  The logic goes that while we all despise negatives, they work.  It is said that we may be the party and people of high minded ideals, but to succeed we need to get down in the gutter with Republicans and tear down John McCain.  

Republicans are playing to their base by being crass and combative.  Neocons are all about picking fights to further their own cause.  I hope that isn’t what we are becoming.  I hope to bring my kids into a world where pride, greed, and religion aren’t bringing about the deaths of millions of innocent people.  We are rewarding a strategy of bluster and aggression.  As long as we judge people by who has the biggest pair, hate and aggression will permeate to every aspect of our global society.

Barack Obama talks about the politics of raising everyone up, rather than tearing them down.  If you really believe this is the man who best represents your ideals then let him lead the country and party on the path he has chosen rather than push him and us to be something we are not.

The good news about Obama's drop in the polls is that the people who shifted their support to McCain in the past month belong to that special class of the electorate known as The Swing Voters.  Swing Voters are people who---unlike you or me---really can be persuaded to vote for either a Democrat or a Republican.  Their support for either candidate is always very tenuous.  Barack Obama has plenty of time to win them back.  Whichever way they happen to be leaning at this point is irrelevant.  It is during the last three weeks of October that Obama needs to win them over.  As the man has said over and over, he is a good learner.  Here are a few of the things he needs to learn in order to win in November and win big...

Barack Obama has reached rarified political air and the precipice of greatness by standing for something. For his staunch and uncompromising ethical commitment to progressive ideals, his promise to pursue them with integrity and his raison d'être of bringing substantive change to a broken country and a political system on life support. That is what inspired an almost hysterical adulation, motivated legions of fervent progressive supporters and enabled him to defeat the Clinton machine in the primaries. It was not pandering to moderate conservatives. Yet this is what Obama, Plouffe and Axelrod have inexplicably decided to do.

An AlterNet article Republicans Have Handed Democrats a Winning Election Issue (http://www.alternet.org/environment/95469/) proposes that the Democrats, and Obama in particular, should shift the focus of the energy crisis to renewable energy and away from offshore oil.  According to the article, they should place the emphasis on renewable energy and allow the Republicans to filibuster in Congress against a bill proposing to extend subsidies to the renewable energy sector.  The filibuster would expose the Republican’s real agenda, which is to continue to support the oil industry and cut off funding for renewables.

I'm (obviously) supporting Obama in this cycle, from the beginning of the primaries til now; but thought I'd post this just for fun; I actually composed (and then deleted) a version of this diary a couple years ago. For what it's worth, my post-Obama candidate for 8 years from now...

[Beginning of make believe]

My dream candidate is a state governor who grew up working class and made himself prosperous by his own efforts. He knows his way around a union hall; while he's been both a union member and management, one of the things that made him want to start a business is he didn't have the stomach for the kind of screwing over of workers that is part and parcel of being a middle manager in many large companies.

There's a story circulated about him that he once missed an important vote in the state assembly because it was opening day of deer season, and he was nowhere to be found.

He is passionate about doing what he can to make sure that workers get a fair deal in America. Reliable rumor has it he once threw a Democratic Party official out of his office, with instructions never to return, because that Democrat had dared to make a crack about "the damned union chiselers."

There's nobody so easy to make a doormat out of, as the person who lays down in expectation of being defeated.  I'm beginning to hear the same BS come from Democrats as has come time and again, this crud about how there's no way we'll win, or how the Republicans will steal the election once again.  I hear it, and my first impulse is to reach through the screen and beat the shit out of people.

Y'all deserve it sometimes.  Just because polls, stupid, impermanent polls suggest a lead is narrowing, just because McCain's advertising is working a little now, you folks start getting nervous, and worse, start cleaning the spot you're planning on laying down in.

Maybe I can help you get use to laying down.  Just stand there while I take a few swings at you.  Hell, if you're planning on taking a beating from the Republicans, why deny me a little of the fun?  Yeah.  Right there will do.

I’m supposed to be finishing another story tonight, but I’ve just come from Darcy Burner’s primary night party...and I have in front of me the results of the important races tonight in Washington’s newfangled "top two" primary.

It is unfair to extrapolate the results of elections in the "People’s Republic of Washington" directly onto a national map, but as I look as these results it seems fair to say that if any Republican strategists aren’t sweating bullets this morning it’s because they’ll be hustling for votes in towns like Maggie Valley, North Carolina (don’t forget to stop by Saratoga’s for the Wednesday night jazz...)...or, perhaps, Bessemer Bend, Wyoming.

For the rest of the Republican community, tonight’s events are not good news.

We have a fair amount to cover, so let’s get to it.

There's a thing going around called, "Why I'm Voting Democrat." As can be expected, it's idiotically wrong-headed and scurrilous, citing false point after false point of jingoism and scare politics. Most of you have probably seen it, or will see it.

Here is my response. If you want to send it out in answer to the Democrat one, or just in general if you like it, feel free to do so. You may use any or all of it, edited or unedited, for content or length. I know it's kind of long, because once I got started ...  

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I’m voting Republican because Al Gore is a Democrat and he has started this hoax about global warming, and wants to make me pay more for gas, or drive a tiny car, instead of my All-American Hummer (which the Republicans gave me a tax deduction for!!). Or else Al Gore will force me to drive a slow electric car, like his gay friends in Hollywood. I believe that if someone investigated it (not the New York Times, which is socialistic) they would find that Al Gore has used the money from all those baloney awards he won to pay off scientists and news liberals to say that there is global warming. Because Al Gore hates my car.