Truth be told I saw this "bitterness" flap coming a mile away. Not the exact words, of course, but something like it. It's how politics works nowadays. Political opponents & corporate media are like packs of jackals – one stumble and they go straight for the jugular. "No mistakes," I kept writing on the blogs, mostly to myself of course, knowing that at some point Barack would say something that his opponents would pounce on and rip apart like starving hyenas.
And so here it is, the whole "bitter & clinging to guns & religion" brouhaha. It's another test, Obama Friends. Just like the Rev. Wright flap. Another test of whether Barack Obama's message of TRUTH, HONESTY, and INTEGRITY can or will prevail in the modern American political system. The jury is still out. There's nothing inevitable or preordained about an Obama victory in November. If it's more than 50 percent likely today, that number could drop through the floor tomorrow. There are no guarantees. In fact I'm fairly skeptical about the so-called "wisdom" of the American people. We did elect G.W. Bush twice, after all. Twice.
Truth is, it was the second time that about killed my faith in the electorate's basic political competency. After 2004 I saw a pretty fair likelihood of a steady slide into a kind of quasi-fascist police state, robustly capitalist, with a quasi-literate populace, politically inert, anaesthetized by a Disneyesque, Murdochesque mass media, the economy dominated by giant corporations, with a permanent underclass (1/4? 1/3? 1/2?) of poor working people, mostly of color. I still think it's entirely possible that's exactly where we're headed.
So this "bitterness" bullshit is a test. Can the American people see through all the twisting and spinning and crap? Can they actually discern the TRUTH? Do they have that capacity? I guess we'll see. And there's something else too – it's going to happen again. Because Barack Obama is too damn smart not to keep speaking his mind with uncommon eloquence about every issue under the sun. And every once in a while he's going to say something that doesn't come out exactly right, and his enemies are going to pounce on it like packs of hungry wolves. It's going to happen again, and again.
Whether he survives these assaults will not be a test of Barack Obama. It will be a test of the basic political competency of the American people.
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(Open Thread, Sun a.m. 4/13)
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