The problem with Clinton's pander to hard-working Americans, WHITE Americans ...

[livingmadness]

is NOT that it is a sign of her inherent racism - it is not. I do not for a second believe the Clinton's are 'racist' - though the fact they are happy to exploit potential racism in the electorate is damning enough ...

is NOT that it further alienates voters that fall outside of this demographic, though doubtless for some it does ...

It is a PROBLEM, precisely because it is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO last decade. Last half-decade even!!!

Frank Rich in the New York Times, makes that point brilliantly in his latest Op-Ed http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/opinion/11rich.html?_r=2&ref=opinion&oref=slogin&oref=slogin">piece:

This is not 1968, when the country was so divided over race and war that cities and campuses exploded in violence ... This is not 1988, when a Democratic liberal from Massachusetts of modest political skills could be easily clobbered by racist ads and an incumbent vice president running for the Gipper’s third term. This is not the 1998 midterms, when the Teflon Clintons triumphed over impeachment. This is not 2004, when another Democrat from Massachusetts did for windsurfing what the previous model did for tanks.

Indeed it is not, it is 2008, we have a country at war, facing economic crisis, and as Obama so often says in his stump speeches, a planet in peril. Unsurprisingly, this gives us a whole new ballgame in elections, and an electorate hungry, nay starved for change:

Almost every wrong prediction about this election cycle has come from those trying to force the round peg of this year’s campaign into the square holes of past political wars ... The year 2008 is far more complex — and exhilarating — than the old templates would have us believe. Of course we’re in pain. More voters think the country is on the wrong track (81 percent) than at any time in the history of New York Times/CBS News polling on that question. George W. Bush is the most unpopular president that any living American has known.

Rich argues that the demographic wars have altered; unprecedented registration of new voters, particularly new Democrats, has and will have an extraordinary impact come November. He cites, as evidence, astonishing increases in the number of young and African American voters in big states during the primaries. He also rightly points out, that Obama seems to realize, and capitalize, on this:

Mr. Obama hardly created this moment, with its potent brew of Bush loathing and sweeping generational change. He simply had the vision to tap into it. Running in 2008 rather than waiting four more years was the single smartest political decision he’s made (and, yes, he’s made dumb ones too). The second smartest was to understand and emphasize that subterranean, nearly universal anticipation of change rather than settle for the narrower band of partisan, dyspeptic Bush-bashing.

Even the media are so caught up in tales of yesterday, in Rove style 'swift-boating', as the weaponry certain to sink any Democratic campaign:

Good as this demographic shift is for a Democratic ticket led by Mr. Obama, it’s even better news that so many pundits and Republicans bitterly cling to the delusion that the Karl Rove playbook of Swift-boating and race-baiting can work as it did four and eight years ago. You can’t surf to a right-wing blog or Fox News without someone beating up on Mr. Wright or the other predictable conservative piñata, Michelle Obama.

This may help rally the anti-Obama vote. But that contingent will be more than offset in November by mobilized young voters, blacks and women, among them many Clinton-supporting Democrats (and independents and Republicans) unlikely to entertain a G.O.P. candidate with a perfect record of voting against abortion rights.

Indeed it is a new day, a new year, one that Clinton and her campaign team seem to have under-estimated. That both John and Cindy McCain have made some effort to emphasize how he will not be similarly negative in his campaigning (undermined of course by his Hamas-swipe) indicates that they are cottoning on to the enormity of the task ahead of them. Judgment, as Obama has said continuously, trumps experience, and for all her experience, Hillary Clinton's fiesty campaign has caused her to underestimate both her opponent and those she hopes to appeal to:

Guess what: there are racists in America and, yes, the occasional rubes (even among Obama voters). Some of them may reside in Indiana, which hasn’t voted for a national Democratic ticket since 1964. But there are many more white working-class voters, both Clinton and Obama supporters, who prefer Democratic policies after seven years of G.O.P. failure. And there is little evidence to suggest that there are enough racists of any class in America, let alone in swing states, to determine the results come fall.

Finally, Mr Rich's prediction?

... as long as the likely Democratic nominee keeps partying like it’s 2008 while everyone else refights the battles of yesteryear, he will continue to be underestimated every step of the way.

[FrenchieCat]

1. Excellent assessment from Frank Rich.....as usual!

Love your pic a lot. I saw the video of that instant that photo was taken. It was really a special flash of a moment! :)

[livingmadness]

8. Thanks Frenchie

Frank Rich has been an astute political commentator for these primaries, what he says in this article is very much in line with what I've been thinking for some time.

Where was that photo taken? I'm ashamed to say I have no idea, I copies online - most probably from this site and added it to my ever growing folder of favorite Obama photos!! Would be nice to know the background.

[Raine]

2. Good read

THANKS for posting it! :thumbsup:

[McCamy Taylor]

3. Bullshit, They drove Edwards out by calling him a phony. They are calling

Clinton a bitch. They will call Obama scary.

People are people. I have heard this "We are so over that old style of politics" a bunch of times in my life now during presidential elections. The only time it worked was in 1976 after Watergate when people really were fed up with Nixon and David Rockefeller through his weight and money behind Carter. So that was the same old style of politics, too, just with a different beat and theme song.

Until this country gets its act together and recognizes that there is one big split that divides everyone along economic lines---with a tiny number amassing the wealth that the great majority slave to accrue---we will remain divided along phony lines of age, gender, race, sexual orientation, nationality, language. Marx and Engels were telling us this a century ago. JD Rockefeller was using the same tricks then to divide and conquer the working class that David Rockefeller (the money man behind Papa Bush's hostages for votes deal in 1980) is using now.

John Edwards was shot down by the MSM and the United States Chambers of Commerce with their public announcement of a $60million bounty on his head for newsmen willing to do oppo against him because he spoke the truth about poverty and corporate greed.

All Frank Rich is doing is reminding the Dems that the $60Million bounty can be applied to them just as easily when he says to ignore the working class. Because the corporate elite is scared shitless that when the Depression comes this time there will be a revolution.

[Tarheel_Dem]

4. Thank you Frank, and thanks to you livingmadness for posting.

:kick:

[Leopolds Ghost]

5. Excellent hit-piece by neo-con war supporter Frank Rich... as usual

"This is not 2004, when another Democrat from Massachusetts did for windsurfing what the previous model (limp-wristed Yankee liberal Dukakis, as defined by Frank Rich and his fellow Reagan workers in the Media) did for tanks."

[Leopolds Ghost]

6. Notice, like the censors of the MLK memorial, he is trying to mold Obama in his image

Attacking practitioners of "narrow partisan, dyspeptic Bush-bashing" and trying to mold the "youth vote" in opposition to the evil socialism of the 60s New Left. 4 years more of this and he will be urging President Obama to invade Iran on the grounds of securing Obama's place in history as a new kind of liberal.

[Leopolds Ghost]

7. WOW! "And there is little evidence to suggest that there are enough racists of any class in America"

"let alone in swing states, to determine the results come fall."

The hits just keep coming from this neoliberal asshole. Does anyone really doubt he would have fallen in line with Clinton and said the exact opposite had she won the primary (which thankfully she did not)?