Barack Obama and Joe Biden: The Change We Need | Duck and Gather: Pandering to an Imaginary Right Wing is Beneath You. Please Cut it Out.

Pandering to an Imaginary Right Wing is Beneath You. Please Cut it Out.

By Peter Savich - Jul 5th, 2008 at 5:08 pm EDT

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I just submitted the title of this post as a proposed group. Something tells me it might get dinged. So let me take this opportunity to define it:

1. Pandering = taking positions after you clinched the nomination in June that not only contradict your previously long-held positions, but that collectively all line up nicely as purporting to "serve" a certain political constituency

2. Right Wing = the last 28 years of American politics, and perhaps last 44 (as some people count), have been dominated by the "right wing", "conservatives", Republicans. They've been interested in issues like evangelical religion, guns, anti-gay, "Islamo-fascism", drug war, anti-welfare, etc.

3. Imaginary Right Wing = The Right Wing is dead for another 20 or so (or 40 or so) years. It's time for the Left. But not the left of the old right-left distinction. And when I say the "Right is dead" I don't mean there aren't people who don't still care about those "Red State" issues. Obviously there are. I'm just saying those people have bigger fish to fry these days, and it's the same fish we old lefties have to fry too (e.g. broken healthcare, home foreclosures, peak oil, unsustainable economy, etc. -- i.e. populist issues that challenge all of us, the lefties and righties, northern and southern, coastal and central, fat and skinny, black, white, brown, yellow, and purple, and every which way you can slice us).

4. Beneath You = You are the greatest orator the nation has seen in 40 years. You're not a fraud either. When you speak with passion, and your audience swoons, you aren't selling something. You are speaking from the heart. Stick to that. Let other politicians let their advisers and poll takers and speech writers put words in their mouths because the faulty data tells them that's what people want to hear. Speak and act as you yourself believe. When you do that, there's no one who comes close to you as a politician. We need to look 40 years back and 80 years back for parallels. Pandering is beneath a historical figure like you.

5. Please Cut it Out = You have opened up your campaign to a depth and breadth not seen before in presidential politics. Why not open up your inner sanctum? Who are the morons on your staff behind this retrograde "move to center" strategy? Let us at 'em! At a minimum, at least hold a public hanging of them so we the mob can all cheer. Please?

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