Spikin’ it in the End Zone

In spite of, or perhaps, *because* of, the sussurations of discontent rippling through the political sphere over Obama’s recent turn to the right (we told you so, sorry, couldn’t resist), Howard Dean, et al has decided to take what ever money is left from what the DNC doesn’t have and bet it all on an extravaganza at Invesco Field in Denver.  Dean’s taking inevitability up to 11. We suspect that a major rock-star-slash-slavishly-deluded-devotee of Obama’s will provide the halftime entertainment. Howard Wolfson, Fox’s newest addition to its political coverage will provide color commentary, along with the master of the game, Karl Rove.

The plan is to fill the seats with thousands and thousands of Coloradans who have nothing better to do to than to celebrate a staged recreation/renewal of Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream Speech” on its 45th anniversary (I’m sure it’s just a coincidence) with a new and improved speech by the Dauphin of Democracy, Barack Obama on the day of his coronation.  His speech has already been hailed by historians as the most-awesomist-uplifting-inspiring rhetoric of the century for people of all races, ethnicities and religious affiliations, regardless of trust fund (offer does not apply to Muslims, women, working class individuals who can’t tell a San Giovese from a Super Tuscan, persons over the age of 50, or sino-peruvian lesbians).

He will be preceded onto the field by a procession of buxom blonde beauties from the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Models with PhDs in Architecture contingent who are free and equal women, wearing hot pants and shiny, white, patent leather boots and carrying pom-poms in aqua and sky (to reflect the lines in his speech about “sea to shining sea and the sky is no limit”)  Right now, they’re practicing their jump left, pom-pom, jump right, pom-pom, step wide, thrust out chest equipt with cantilevered demi-bra with silicone gel add-ons, grind, left-right-left (to reflect Obama’s propensity to swing back and forth).

At the end of the speech, Obama will run into the end zone where he will stand patiently waiting for Howard Dean to lob the phallus, er, football from the 10 yard line.  Obama will spike and do the funky chicken, take a victory lap, pour Gatorade on John Kerry’s head, accept the nomination and become the Patriot we know him to be.

“Mitchellism”

I am coining a new term today.
Mitchellism: The tendency of the media to see American politics through its own eyes and to over value its impact on the voting public.

This tendency has been noted before by other bloggers who have referred to the Washington DC press corps and pundits as The Villagers, that self-selected authority of knowledge of what the voters will or will not tolerate. High-Brodersim is another variation and is the belief that the root of the problem in American politics is too much partisanship and if the Democrats would just sell out all of their beliefs and try to meet Republicans half way, there wouldn’t be any more fights and there would be unity and much rejoicing and we could all buy the world a Coke. Barack Obama is a disciple of High Broderism.

But Andrea Mitchell is the high priestess of cluelessly arrogant Mitchellism. This was brought home to me this morning when she snippily and half mockingly told Howard Wolfson that the gas tax idea was DOA in Congress, it would never get passed and anyway, the NYTimes had already weighed in on this issue and concluded that Hillary was insincere for even proposing it.

Wolfson deftly put her in her place by saying something like, (paraphrasing heavily) “A politician makes a proposal, it goes in front of the public, their representatives hash it out, public opinion gets shaped one way or another and things get voted on. It’s called Democracy, Andrea. You should look it up sometime.”

Ohh, SNAP! He told her. You should have heard it. It was a thing of beauty. Of course, it doesn’t fit with Andrea’s worldview where the responsibility of the media is to tell people what to think and how to vote. But I have noticed a curious thing happening this primary season. I don’t think the voters trust the media much these days. Just think about what happened in PA. Nearly every paper in the state endorsed Obama. And Hillary won by 10. Oh and then there was Massachusetts. Same thing. Obama, Obama, Obama! Voters said, “ehhhhh, not so much”. In fact, the media has relentlessly fluffed Obama. He literally can do nothing wrong. His campaign is crack, his family is beautiful, his every pronouncement stirring and inspirational. Yet, the voters stupidly go for Clinton over and over again.

Remember back in November and December of 2000? The media went all Chicken Little on us and told us the country would fall apart if Gore didn’t concede? And remember how the Weapons of Mass Destruction would rain down upon us in 45 minutes if we didn’t go into Iraq right now, RIGHT NOW, I SAY, and disarm Hussein? And how did both of those scenarios go? So, now, the media is starting to rev up the noise about how Clinton threatens the party and the country if she challenges the DNC at the convention (or before) on the resolution of the FL and MI delegations. I think Lincoln wisely remarked on fooling all of the people all of the time. There is a limit to how much of this stuff you can get away with and it has been reached. One of the most beneficial things that can come out of this protracted primary season is that we may finally be able to retire people like Andrea Mitchell, David Broder, Cokie Roberts and the other Villagers. Nobody’s listening to them anymore anyway.

We need a bigger Haka

I left Harrisburg at 4:00pm. Got a parking ticket. 😦 The office was humming along. All the way home in the car I heard reports of municipal boards of elections swamped with lines to register before the doors even opened this morning. It would be wrong to assume that this was just Obama’s work. It was not. The Clinton campaign mailed out registration forms to many households and they did canvassing and many other things this weekend. My phone banking only turned up 2 Obamaphiles. The rest were either firmly in Hillary’s corner or undecideds. I LOVE undecideds. They want to be seduced. They want to be told that their vote is the most important thing in the world to you. And it is. They are very important people. I try to direct them to Hillary’s site to read the issues online. It is very nice to hear that there are so many people in PA who are sick and tired of Republicans and are willing to step outside their comfort zone and vote for a Democrat, especially Hillary, who has withstood so much negativity. Which brings me to the second thing that happened today.

SUNday, SUNday, SUNday!

Monster trucks and funny cars!

Whoops!

Ok, I am watching This Week With George S., and Wolfson is hammering Axlerod on Obama’s committee assignments in the Foreign Relations committee. Obama hasn’t held a single hearing on NATO and Afghanistan and Axlerod is tap-dancing all around the issue with, “But Hillary voted for the IWR! SHE voted for it! It’s her judgment.”

Jeez, David, is that all you’ve got? I mean, let’s think about this for a moment. Almost the entire appeal of Obama to the left blogosphere on DailyKos and OpenLeft and TalkingPointsMemo is this one vote. This one vote out of the entire 35 year history. Everything else about Hillary they’re pretty cool with but THIS vote and that meaningless Lieberman-Kyl resolution, gets their knickers in a twist. And let’s be absolutely clear about this, they were willing and able to overlook this in Senator Kerry in 2004. Yep, it was all ticketyboo for Kerry to have voted for it AND say that he would have voted for it again if he’d had a chance. Hillary at least regrets it and wishes she had a do-over. But Kerry had no coherent message about Iraq and was all over the place about his vote. And to our merry band of Kossacks, that was O. K.

The hypocrisy is really quite astonishing when you think about it. For Hillary Clinton, her entire body of accomplishments in public service is reduced to nothing because she did this one stupid vote. Maybe that’s how it should always be. If you are an accomplice to getting us into a war we have to spend years getting out of at a cost of thousands of young lives, you *should* be held accountable. But at least be consistent. And when it comes to Kerry vs Clinton, at least you can say that her constituents would have demanded it. They would have preferred to be safer than sorry. One other thing we didn’t consider is that Bill Clinton was a very responsible president when it came to foreign affairs. Maybe it was unthinkable to either Clinton that Bush would be so reckless with the military. I don’t know. I am not making excuses. I don’t know what was going on in her head. All I know is that she was in a tougher spot than Obama has EVER been in and her options, as a senator from the state of New York, were very limited.

Do I trust her to do the right thing in the White House as Commander in Chief? Absolutely. She knows that a broken military leaves us vulnerable in terms of national security. One of the first orders of business for her will be to stabilize what is left of our forces. We are overcommitted and depleted. We can’t stay in Iraq. We must address Afghanistan. Along with Generals Wesley Clark and Hugh Shelton, Madeline Albright and the Big Dawg himself, I feel confident that she will move quickly to halt the further disintegration of our foreign policy around the world. Obama, on the other hand, will spend his first couple of years just getting up to speed.

Maybe he can fit a meeting on NATO and Afghanistan into his schedule. That is, if he has time from the Recession. Good luck with that, Barry.

On other thing: Howard, with respect to the Rezko issue, don’t go there. Really. After Whitewater, we just really don’t need to encourage the media to dredge up that stuff and distract us. If we end up with Obama as our nominee, the media will just use it against him in order to promote McCain.

Nevermind. Pound the bastard.