Vote for Obama! Or else!

Victor Davis Hanson has one of the best analyses of the current predicament vis-a-vis the election that I have seen in recent days. (A must read.) He thinks time is running out (that’s the title of the piece!), and even though the most moderate Republican in history is running against the most left wing Democrat in history, ordinary voters still don’t get it:

The truth is that we have an election between a moderate Republican whose centrist positions worry conservatives, who is pitted against a fringe-hyper-liberal candidate who must somehow assure the voters he is merely liberal. Never in recent history, have Republicans nominated one so moderate, never Democrats one so hard left. Yet we are not getting from a proud and unapologetic Obama “My left-wing views have at last proven prescient and arrived, and McCain’s namby-pamby moderation is not what these crisis times call for.”
Instead, it is dissumaltion all the time, as Obama (for now) essentially has refuted most of his prior positions on the major issues. Even his tax-and-spend plans are now on hold, pending the Wall Street uncertainty. We know nothing really of his background between Columbia and Harvard Law School. Few can figure out exactly what he and Ayers were trying to do with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge other than to give someone else’s millions to further the hard-left agendas of a number of cronies whose efforts did not result in any marginal improvement in the Chicago schools.
In other words, the most liberal presidential candidate in our memory is suddenly posing as a moderate centrist not much different from McCain (e.g., “I agree with John…” ad nauseam). And McCain thus far has not been able to scratch the thin veneer. Had Palin once worked in community organizing with a Timothy McVeigh, or had McCain been the member of a white supremacist church for 20 years, or had McCain been judged the most conservative member of the Senate, the McCain-Palin ticket would have long ago imploded.

I couldn’t agree more. The Bill Ayers connection needs to become known.
Hanson thinks the race card has been played very skillfully:

The most brilliant prepping has been an anticipatory demonization of the white working class in an effort through shame, fear, or pity to sway them to vote Obama. The narrative advanced is that if McCain wins, the real reason is because working-class Democrats–once they collectively get into the privacy of the voting booth–sighed and voted against Obama because he is of half-African ancestry, despite telling pollsters they would not.
In the last two weeks I think I have read at least 20 op-eds with one of the following three premises: (1) warning: Many Americans are racists, and the election will thus hinge on race, so you have one last chance to get it right; (2) shame: The world is watching, and will either like or dislike us, depending on our support for Obama; (3) fear: If Obama loses, expect furor or even near riots.

However, it’s being overdone, and he thinks they need to cool it:

The white working class is tiring of the constant sermons on race, either chauvinism or veiled threats or overt insults. Obama’s supporters really need to cool it, and stop suggesting that at each dip in his polls, Americans are proving less than noble people. The only thing that will really lose them the working-class vote is the gun-to-the-head, you’d better vote this way or else attitude.
I grew up among the Democratic working classes, and I can vouch for one eternal truth about them: anyone who lectures them about what they “must” do–or else–will simply achieve the opposite result, every time….

Good advice for the Obama campaign. I hope they fail to heed it, and I hope they continue to overplay their hand.
Endless accusations of racism and thuggish Obama Truth Squad tactics may be McCain’s best hope.
UPDATE: My thanks to Sean Kinsell for linking this post in a great discussion of elitism.


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4 responses to “Vote for Obama! Or else!”

  1. Larry Sheldon Avatar
    Larry Sheldon

    John Funds “Stealing Elections” makes it very clear (and I am only a little ways into the book) that it is already too late due to early voting, mail in voting, registration fraud and other reasons to numerous to relate here.
    Buy the book. Especially if you like horror stories.

  2. Clint Avatar
    Clint

    I wonder if this is the sort of thing Palin could mobilize — turning the shame into righteous anger — with a line like, “How dare these so-called elites who mock us as hicks and rednecks who cling — “CLING” — to our guns and religion — how DARE they now call us racists for having doubts about a left-wing ideologue who describes himself, HIMSELF, as a blank slate, but whose record shows that no leftist position is too extreme for him to embrace when acting and voting, or to deny while speaking…” She can follow with a tirade about his extreme voting record, or perhaps his tendency to try to take credit for everything under the sun. Or she could reprise the “says one thing in Scranton and another in San Francisco” — and make it explicitly about issue positions instead of just elitism. Or she could jump back to repeat the refrain of “how dare these so-called elites…” attacking the media for giving Obama a total pass…
    In fact, if she could tie all of the mocking of her to the “you’re a racist” campaign making it a media elites mocking us real Americans… wow. She could blow the race wide open…

  3. tim maguire Avatar
    tim maguire

    There’s plenty of material McCain is letting sit unused. I thought he’d pull it out during the debates but, having watched the first one, I am wondering–will he pull it out at all?
    Also, After the debate, I didn’t like the “Barack agrees with John” video because I thought it punished civility. The candidates should be able to admit where they agree. But I see now there is another problem with the ad–McCain doesn’t want to highlight where they agree, he wants to highlight where they disagree.
    Really, here he is a moderate having trouble holding his conservative base together and he releases an ad saying the crazy leftist likes the way he thinks!

  4. Michael McNeil Avatar

    It’s important to make clear that Bill Ayers is by no means an ex-radical, as Chicago Mayor Richard Daley claimed in a statement praising Ayers earlier this year:

    I also know Bill Ayers. He worked with me in shaping our now nationally-renowned school reform program. He is a nationally recognized distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois/Chicago and a valued member of the Chicago community.

    I don’t condone what he did 40 years ago but I remember that period well. It was a difficult time, but those days are long over. I believe we have too many challenges in Chicago and our country to keep refighting 40-year-old battles.

    However, all one must do is go to Ayers’ own web site (note first of all the emblem at the top of that page), where Ayers proudly displays the speech he delivered in Venezuela less than two years ago, in November 2006, addressing Hugo Chavez. As he said at that time:

    Amamos la revolucion Bolivariana!

    This is my fourth visit to Venezuela, each time at the invitation of my comrade and friend Luis Bonilla, a brilliant educator and inspiring fighter for justice. Luis has taught me a great deal about the Bolivarian Revolution and about the profound educational reforms underway here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chavez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution, and I’ve come to appreciate Luis as a major asset in both the Venezuelan and the international struggle — I look forward to seeing how he and all of you continue to overcome the failings of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane. […]

    “We can’t have education without revolution. We have tried peace education for 1,900 years and it has failed. Let us try revolution and see what it will do now.”

    I walked out of jail and into my first teaching position — and from that day until this I’ve thought of myself as a teacher, but I’ve also understood teaching as a project intimately connected with social justice. After all, the fundamental message of the teacher is this: you can change your life — whoever you are, wherever you’ve been, whatever you’ve done, another world is possible. As students and teachers begin to see themselves as linked to one another, as tied to history and capable of collective action, the fundamental message of teaching shifts slightly, and becomes broader, more generous: we must change ourselves as we come together to change the world. Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!