American Politics - Public Relations Style

Democracy Now
November 24, 2008


Noam Chomsky
What Next? The Elections, The Economy, and The World

mp3 download of Chomsky interview

...the [2008 presidential ] election was just an event that was particular stage in a long continuing struggle, a lot before and a lot after. There was day when people pushed the levers but that’s just an event in ongoing popular struggles, very serious ones. A couple of years ago, there was a major struggle over privatization of water. An effort which it would in effect deprive a good part of the population of water to drink. And it was a bitter struggle. A lot of people were killed, but they won it. Through international solidarity, in fact, which helped. And it continues. Now that’s a real election. Again, the plans, the programs are being developed, acted on constantly by mass popular movements, which then select their own representatives from their own ranks to carry out their programs. And that’s quite different from what happened here.

Actually what happened here is understood by elite elements. The public relations industry which runs elections here-quadrennial extravaganzas essentially- makes sure to keep issues in the margins and focus on personalities and character and so on–and-so forth. They do that for good reasons. They know- they look at public opinion studies and they know perfectly well that on a host of major issues both parties are well to the right of the population. That’s one good reason to keep issues off the table. And they recognize the success.

So, every year, the advertising industry gives a prize to, you know, to the best marketing campaign of the year. This year, Obama won the prize. Beat out Apple company. The best marketing campaign of 2008. Which is correct, it is essentially what happened...more

Election 2008: How powerful is the internet?

Just how powerful is the internet?  Beyond our wildest dreams.  Even dreamacttexas, that started as a protest to mistreatment of DREAMers on a trip from Texas to D.C.; with no help, no links, no financial backing, making it to over 76K visits in just 14 months!  

Voters took advantage of this power in the 2008 presidential election....this is just the beginning. How much else can we change?

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Keen on New Media: Did the Internet elect Barack Obama?
By Andrew Keen

London Independent IndyBlog

November 10, 2008

Did the Internet elect Barack Obama? Could Obama have been elected without the Internet's citizen-media blogs and the social-networking activism of Facebook users and all those millions of user-generated YouTube videos? Is this really the firstly truly interactive online election which has not only revolutionized the politics of race in America but has also fundamentally changed the way in which media influences and is influenced by democratic politics?

Just as Barack Obama is an ideological hybrid of Chicago street activism and the consensual politics of the US Senate, so the outcome of the 2008 election itself has been shaped by a hybrid of traditional and new media. In fact, old mainstream media and the supposedly new media of the Internet have become so entangled in America that it is becoming increasingly hard to cleanly separate one from the other.

The 2008 election was as equally determined by the popularity of traditional mainstream television clips broadcast on YouTube as it was by the work of influential professional journalists blogging for free on leading websites like HuffingtonPost. The truth is that old and new journalism have converged in America to form a hybrid media which has synthesized the new democratic interactivity of the Internet with the traditional curatorial habits of edited-from-above media.

On a financial level, of course, the internet really has changed everything about American politics. Certainly Obama couldn't have challenged Hillary Clinton or radically outspent John McCain without the estimated $500 million in small donations mostly raised on the Internet. Nor could his campaign have had its remarkable success without its efficacious use of the most up-to-date viral marketing tools of digital technology such as the microblogging service Twitter and the cell phone texting technology Obama used to broadcast his selection of Joe Biden as his Vice-Presidential pick. Indeed, the online development of the Obama brand itself is a casebook example of how the viral internet enables the guerilla marketing of sexy products such as handsome young Harvard educated politicians with messianic messages about redemption and change...more

The BBC's patronizing interview: asking Dizzee Rascal, do you feel British?

if you are born in the UK and are asked, do you feel British? what would you say? currently the BBC is receiving much criticism for its interview with Dizzee Rascal after Obama's election.

Salon.com calls the election at 10:00 pm Eastern

IT'S OBAMA!

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Salon.com

November 5, 2008

22:08 Eastern Time

After his win in Ohio, and with victories in blue states like California assured, Salon is ready to project that Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States.

As the election currently stands -- and assuming the calls on Ohio and Pennsylvania hold up -- Obama has 207 Electoral College votes, 63 short of the 270 needed for victory. But with California's 55 votes sure to follow, along with Hawaii's four votes and Washington's 11, it's now clear that Obama will get to the magic number and win the presidency.
― Alex Koppelman

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Signs of who will win - from Salon.com

How to read the numbers on Election Day
By Paul Maslin

Salon.com

Nov. 4, 2008 | Barring some cataclysmic change in the race's final hours, Tuesday's outcome no longer seems in doubt. What still hangs in the balance is the size and scope of the victory. Do the Democrats bust through, with Obama winning by more than 5 or 6 points -- even double digits, 350 or more electoral votes, and a congressional majority enhanced by more than seven new Senate and 25 new House seats? Or does Obama, as often happened in the primaries, fail to close part of the sale and win by a less impressive margin, say 3 or 4 points, with a later than expected Election Night sweat and less modest increase in his party's congressional ranks? more

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Obama, McCain - and the lost GOP

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McCain is on the verge of a defeat that marks the end of the Republican era

Today's vote is likely to prove epochal. Bush's failure and the banks' collapse have exposed a deeply divided party

o Sidney Blumenthal in Chicago
o The Guardian,
o Tuesday November 4 2008


Today's election is poised to end the Republican era in American politics - an era that began in reaction to Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, the Vietnam war and the civil rights revolution, was pioneered by Richard Nixon, consolidated by Ronald Reagan, and wrecked by George W Bush.

Almost every aspect of the Republican ascendancy has been discredited and lies in tatters - its policies, politics, and even its version of patriotism - down to the rock-bottom notion that progressive taxation itself, initiated by a Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt, who John McCain hails as his personal icon, is unpatriotic.

McCain's own chronic helplessness in establishing rapport, prompting him to latch on to mediums from Sarah Palin to Joe the Plumber, is aggravated by his party's decay. He is an ironic character to make the last stand on behalf of a party he has been at odds with for virtually his whole career.

McCain is less a victim of age than of the age - the end of the age of Reagan. Realignments in American party politics are the consequence of catastrophe. The coming of the civil war produced the Republican party that more or less ruled until the Great Depression brought about the New Deal. The modern Republican era began with the fragmentation of the liberal Democratic consensus in 1968 over Vietnam, civil rights and urban mayhem. Southerners and the urban ethnic working and middle classes shifted allegiance, forging a coalition that delivered 49 states first to Nixon in 1972 and then to Reagan in 1984.

The strange death of Republican America has been a long time in the making. As early as 1988, the Reagan coalition threatened to unravel. Only when the Republican candidate, George HW Bush, resorted to a vicious campaign - conjuring the pledge of allegiance to the flag and an African-American rapist named Willie Horton, against a worthy and weak Democratic candidate, Michael Dukakis - was the hold on power preserved...  more

Election Fraud in 2008 Presidential Election

Marge Tartaglione and the Pennsylvania vote.

This video is shown during today's Democracy Now program. For longer video on the voting fraud issue see below:

Click this for link to democracynow.org, then click REAL VIDEO

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Democracy Now
November 3, 2008

AMY GOODMAN: Election Day is one day away. Tomorrow, tens of millions of Americans will head to the polls. Is the nation’s voting system ready for the unprecedented turnout?

Already, more votes have been cast before Election Day than ever before. As of Saturday night, there were some 27 million absentee and early votes in thirty states, according to the Associated Press. But already, reports of voting irregularities, long lines, malfunctioning machines and badly managed polling stations are pouring in from across the country.

Despite documented irregularities, about a quarter of all voters will use electronic machines that offer no paper record to verify their choice was accurately recorded. Voting rights groups have filed lawsuits against election officials in Pennsylvania and Virginia, saying they have not stocked enough paper ballots to prepare for the expected turnout.

In Colorado, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia, voters have reported using touch-screen machines that have flipped their votes to the wrong candidate or party. Meanwhile, Florida has switched to its third ballot system in the past three election cycles, and glitches associated with the transition have caused confusion at early voting sites.

This all comes in the wake of voter suppression tactics that have seen tens of thousands of voters potentially lose their right to vote. In the battleground state of Colorado, voter rights activists recently won a major victory after state officials agreed to reinstate tens of thousands of people whose names had been removed from the voter rolls.

Mark Crispin Miller is a professor of media culture and communication at New York University. He is the author of several books, most recently Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000–2008. His previous book, Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They’ll Steal the Next One Too... more

The NEW American Electorate

I wonder if some in our administration will start regretting they endorsed all those awful ICE raids. You, know people do remember...

here is a report on the voting power of immigrants and their children:


NewCitizenVotersWEBversion-1

Get your own at Scribd or explore others:

A video from the London Guardian on tomorrow's election

London Guardian  -  VIDEO

November 3, 2008

'Americans are desperate for change'

Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland analyses the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain on the eve of the US elections

click here to see video

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Advice on voting: from Oprah

Oprah: "check. Make sure you double check" to see if your voting machine posted your vote!

Democracynow.org
November 3, 2008

Oprah Winfrey: Electronic Voting Machine Initially Dropped My Vote

Talk show host Oprah Winfrey was among those who took part in early voting in Chicago. On her show on Friday, Winfrey revealed she had problems inside the polling booth.

Oprah Winfrey: "When I voted yesterday electronically, the first vote that you vote for on the ballot is the presidential candidate. And so, I hadn’t—you know, it was my first time doing electronic, so I didn’t obviously mark the X strong enough, or I held down too long, because then when I went back to check it, it had not recorded my presidential vote. And I was like, ohhOhhOh. And so the woman is walking around. And she says, why are you going back, why are you going back? I go, because it…didn’t…record…my presidential vote! So I went back and double-checked. So that’s why they have the, you know—check. Make sure you double check.”

link to photo

Voting ID? Obama T-Shirts at the Polling Booth?

For those in the D.C. area
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Some Facts to Know Before You Go to Vote
By Fredrick Kunkle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 2, 2008; C06

When is Election Day?

It's Tuesday, Nov. 4. Polls will be open in Virginia from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. In Maryland and the District, they will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

How do I find my polling place and verify that I am registered to vote?
In Virginia, visit http://www.sbe.virginia.gov/cms/.

In Maryland, visit http://www.elections.state.md.us/.

In the District, visit http://www.dcboee.org/.

Am I required to bring identification to the polling place?
In Virginia, yes. Voters are required to present identification. Acceptable forms of ID include a Virginia voter registration card, driver's license, Social Security card or an ID issued by the military, federal government or employer. Federal law requires first-time voters who registered by mail and did not include a copy of an ID with their registration application to present any one of the following forms of ID: a current valid photo ID or a current utility bill, bank statement, paycheck or government check bearing the person's name and address or another current government document with name and address, such as a voter's card.

In Maryland, generally no -- but it is probably a good idea to bring some. Although most voters do not have to show a registration card or their driver's license, some first-time voters and others who did not provide certain information on their voter registration application will be required to show ID. Voters are required only to provide their legal name when they check in to vote, and their legal name does not necessarily have to be their full legal name, either. For example, you are not required to use your middle name on your voting registration application.

In the District, generally no. According to federal law, the only people required to show ID are first-time voters who registered by mail and did not include an ID with their registration.

Can I wear campaign buttons or T-shirts into the polling place?
In Virginia, no. Seeking to clarify the commonwealth's code on exhibiting campaign material within 40 feet of the polls, the Virginia State Board of Elections on Oct. 14 approved a policy that prohibits people from displaying "any material, object, item, advertisement, or piece of apparel which has the purpose of expressly advocating the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate or issue."

In Maryland, yes. Voters may wear campaign buttons, T-shirts or stickers into the polling place while marking their ballots -- but they may not linger. Election judges, challengers, watchers and others stationed inside the polling place or within 100 feet of the polling place may not wear or display such materials.

In the District, no. Municipal regulations forbid political activity within 50 feet of a polling place, and this is construed as wearing buttons or T-shirts. more

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Latino vote backlash against anti-immigrationist Republicans

Interesting coming from someone so conservative.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/31/AR2008103101514.html?sub=AR

LINDA CHAVEZ

Washington Post

November 1, 2008

Chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity; member of the Reagan administration

I'd be surprised if John McCain wins even 30 percent of the Hispanic vote, through no fault of his own. What a difference four years makes. In 2004, President Bush won 4 in 10 Hispanic votes, and Democrats worried that their long-time dominance among Hispanics was slipping away. But thanks to harsh Republican rhetoric on immigration, Hispanics have since cooled to Republicans, badly damaging McCain's chances to win Colorado, Florida, Nevada and New Mexico.

There is much irony here. McCain will be punished even though he was a champion of comprehensive immigration reform. And while the immigration issue will cost McCain some Hispanic votes, it is unlikely to gain Republicans any advantage among other voters. The issue has largely evaporated as a major concern in the general election -- it didn't even come up during the presidential debates.

It's no wonder. Despite hyperbole to the contrary, illegal immigration is actually down significantly from its peak -- which occurred in 2000. The illegal-immigrant population grew about 800,000 persons a year from 2000 to 2005, the Pew Hispanic Center estimates. The numbers have since declined to an average of 500,000 net new illegal immigrants each year. While stepped-up enforcement has played a role, the economic downturn has probably been the chief factor reducing the flow.

A pleasant surprise Tuesday would be the election of a president with the fortitude to tackle this issue. complete article

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Piolin is voting

Piolin is the guy who helped organize the gigantic march in Los Angeles in Spring 2006.  The size of his audience is astounding, he has 28 million listeners in 23 states! .....He is now an American citizen and plans to vote-  see this interview by the Washington Post.  AP photo by Damian Dovarganes.

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Washington Post - Interactive

October 31, 2008

video haiku:  the campaign in moments

Candidates love to court, and all voters are potential lovers.  Why not some Latino love?  Barack Obama to Latinos:  "You hold this election in your hands."  Sarah Palin to Latinos:  Meet the new Jose the Plumber, Tito el constructor.  John McCain and Obama to Laitnos:  Live interviews with Tweety Bird.

Not the Oscar-winning cartoon character, Tweety Bird.  The Spanish-Language morning radio sensation, Eddie "Piolin" Sotelo.  That Tweety Bird...

See Video and Interactive

The Other Piolin (Piolin means Tweety Bird in Spanish):



link to cartoon image

Just because you aren't a citizen doesn't mean you don't care about who wins

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/30/AR2008103002876_pf.html

Unable to vote, noncitizen immigrants volunteer

By JULIANA BARBASSA
The Associated Press
Thursday, October 30, 2008; 3:06 PM

-- From Florida to California, they're working hard on the upcoming election _ knocking on doors in ethnic neighborhoods, manning the phones in myriad languages and distributing political flyers. But come Tuesday, they won't vote. They can't: They're not citizens.

The excitement that has made American voter registration numbers soar has trickled deep into the country's immigrant population. But almost two-thirds of the 37.5 million foreign-born people in the United States have not taken the oath of allegiance, and are shut out from casting a ballot.

Non-citizen immigrants, legal or not, are putting their time and their effort where their vote would be.

"There are a lot of people who want to be voters one day, but it can take a lot of time," said Kishan Putta, national director of Indians for McCain. "They do want to get involved. They're calling, wanting to participate."

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Voting Machine Problems in 8 Texas Counties

Be careful when you vote straight ticket...

Problems with electronic voting machines in these Texas Counties
Collin, Brazoria, Dallas, El Paso, Galveston, Harris, Jefferson, and Palo Pinto.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/10/straight-party.html

Texas Voters Urged to Avoid Straight-Party Option, After Vote-Flip Complaints
By Kim Zetter October 29, 2008 | 3:21:43 PMCategories: E-Voting, Election '08
A number of voters in several Texas counties have been complaining that voting machines they used to cast early votes flipped their votes from Democratic choices to Republican ones.

Voters have reported that when they tried to vote a straight-party Democratic ticket, the machine flipped their choices to Republican candidates instead. In some cases, voters reported a problem only with the presidential race; in other cases voters reported the entire ballot being marked Republican by the machine.
The counties where the problems were reported use different kinds of voting machines from three of the top voting machine companies -- Election Systems & Software, Diebold Election Systems (now Premier Election Solutions) and Hart InterCivic...

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About Voting Problems

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For Immediate Release
October 28, 2008
Contact: Jonathan Godfrey
Lillian German

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), House Administration Committee Chairman Robert Brady, and respective Subcommittee Chairs Jerrold Nadler and Zoe Lofgren today sent correspondence to each state’s secretary of state regarding voting issues. Below is an exerpt. Entire text of the letter is linked by a Scribd file.


"Several voting issues have surfaced across the country ranging from schemes to challenge voters based on their home foreclosure status to allegations of illegal purges of tens of thousands of eligible voters based on undeliverable mail and conflicting database information." House Judiciary Committee, October 28, 2008

click arrow pointing down for options such as enlarging text

Conyers Brady Nadler Lofgren081028 - Upload a Document to Scribd

Immigration is a secret in the presidential election

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/27/why_dont_barack_obama_and_john

Why don't McCain and Obama Talk about the Working Class

link to mp3

excerpt of transcript:

JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d like to ask you about another part of the working class, the other part of the working class that’s gotten no attention: immigrants, the undocumented immigrants in the country. It seems that there’s been almost an unwritten agreement among both candidates and the media not to ask Obama or McCain about their immigration policies since the primaries. Once the primaries were over, the debate is over, in terms of the national debate. Your sense?

MICHAEL ZWEIG: It’s really quite interesting that that’s true. I didn’t expect that. I thought that the immigration question would be really a much larger one. Of course, McCain has a fairly liberal view towards immigration in the sense that he doesn’t want to just expel everybody and lock them all up.

AMY GOODMAN: So much so that Lou Dobbs of Fox, they were calling him “Juan McCain.”

MICHAEL ZWEIG: Is that right? Well, you know, you have a situation there where maybe there’s not that big of a difference, and these candidates have decided and their campaigns have decided that that’s just too much of a third rail, and it’s too emotional, and it’s too crazy, and they’re just not going to get into it.

JUAN GONZALEZ: For both campaigns.

MICHAEL ZWEIG: Yeah. They don’t need to get into it. And each has enough in them in their backgrounds and in their programs that Lou Dobbs and that whole militant anti-immigrant crowd is going to be dissatisfied with both of them, so why get into it?

JUAN GONZALEZ: But there is the issue of, will they continue to build a wall? Will they continue to prosecute, to have the raids that they’re—the massive raids that are going on?

MICHAEL ZWEIG: Yeah, but you can’t get into those questions with them without opening the whole question of immigration. I think what they’ve done is they’ve decided they’re just not going to talk about the whole question of immigration, and then we can only be left to guess what will they actually do.

You know, I will say that in the immigration situation, whatever happens, we want to make sure that there isn’t a two-tier labor force that we have in this country, where the immigrants, in whatever form they’re here, as guest workers or in whatever guise we sort of allow them to come into America, that they are some second-class labor citizen. That, I think we really have to be very careful about.

And I will say, about the Employee Free Choice Act that Steve Early was talking about before, it’s a very, very important thing. On the other hand, I’m concerned that a Democratic administration in Congress is going to give the labor movement an Employee Free Choice Act—

AMY GOODMAN: Which means…?

MICHAEL ZWEIG: Which means that the principal legislative agenda item for the labor movement, to make it easier to organize unions, will be enacted, probably quite early. And then, the labor movement is going to be told, “You go organize your workers, and don’t bother us anymore with any other questions, because now we have serious business to attend to and all the rest of the agenda of the government.” And labor is going to be cut out in issues of the war in Iraq or in Afghanistan, in issues of the reconstruction of the banking regulations, in issues of housing and all the other items that are so very important to working people in this country. The labor movement is going to get its piece in the Employee Free Choice Act, and in much the same way that the Clinton administration gave labor the employee Family Leave Act—unpaid, but still a Family Leave Act in 1993. It was a very important thing. But that was pretty much the end of labor’s agenda in the Clinton years. And the rest of it was devoted to deregulating the financial industry and ending welfare as we know it. And so, I’m a little concerned that we are going to be in a situation where we put so much weight on the Employee Free Choice Act that we are going to be left aside in the other deliberations.

STEVEN GREENHOUSE: I see something—

AMY GOODMAN: Steve Greenhouse?

STEVEN GREENHOUSE: —things somewhat differently from Mike. I think the unions are playing their hand pretty well this election. They are going all out to help Obama, and clearly, you know, if Obama is elected, they’re going to expect him to implement some of the things they’re pushing for. And they’re pushing for three things at once. One is this Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for workers to unionize. Second, they’re pushing very, very, very hard for economic stimulus, which dovetails with what a lot of liberal Democrats want anyway. And third, they’re pushing very, very hard for universal health coverage, and that’s something Obama has promised. So I think they’ll feel very, very angry if Obama says, “We gave you Employee Free Choice Act, and we’re going to ignore you on other things.” The other things they’re pushing for are the very things that many, many Democrats are pushing for.

AMY GOODMAN: Last word. You have thirty seconds, Steve Early.

STEVE EARLY: I think it’s overly optimistic to assume that the Employee Free Choice Act, expanding the right to organize in this country, is going to sail through the new Congress. You look back at the history of labor law reform efforts over the last thirty years, under Clinton and Carter, a lot of disappointment and a record of failure. It’s going to take a tremendous grassroots movement, now and then, by organized workers to keep the pressure on Obama and the Democrats to make this long overdue change so that workers can organize more freely without management interference. It’s not a done deal. And I think Obama would prefer to avoid a knockdown, drag-out fight with corporate America over this issue right out of the box.

AMY GOODMAN: Steve Early, I want to thank you for being with us. Steve Early, Boston-based labor journalist. Steven Greenhouse with the New York Times, his book, The Big Squeeze. And Michael Zweig, joining us from State University of New York, Stony Brook, he is the head of the Center for the Study of Working Class Life at SUNY, Stony Brook, his book, What’s Class Got to Do with It?

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A personal report on early voting

Those machines....

It sort of reminds me of using an ATM, but much more confusing.  When I saw all I the buttons I had to push, I became rather uncomfortable.  All I could remember was those stories of switched votes, I thought for a minute I would just vote straight ticket.  I decided against that because I don't like to blanket vote for people I never heard of.  But I found out later that my husband chose the easy route when he voted later in the day, I certainly don't blame him.

I voted in a Latino neighborhood that is heavily immigrant.  There were no lines, but then I went at 10 am.  The people were friendly and helpful.  There weren't any campaign workers outside to bother me.

It is very bothersome that there is no paper trail on my vote.  I can't imagine why it would be so difficult for the designer of the machines to have added that on.  After all, ATMs give receipts, those new digital parking meters, and cash registers...  I held on to my number, 6001, but then, what good will it do, the number doesn't say who I voted for, just in case my vote gets lost.

For those who have attention deficit, are dyslexic, and are not technologically minded, these little machines could be a nightmare.   

White People Don't All Look Alike

In today's NYT's Frank Rich published an interesting piece about how not all white people are racists.  He believes the McCain campaign has been promoting this idea (along with the media).  Well there are lots of folks that believe white people wouldn't vote for a Black man- my Dad told me that early on.  But now he has an Obama sign in his front yard... so I guess he worked things out and thinks his white friends have too.

While many of us say that America is still very racist (which in many ways is true) - there are actually white people out there who really try not to be that way.  Of course we all have our prejudices - none of us are Mother Teresa.  But things are in no way similar to how they were 30 years ago.  Of course there are still lots of white people who mistrust Black people (or any group of color for that matter)- if that wasn't true, the KKK wouldn't exist anymore.

But believe it or not there are some white people that at least make an effort.  Over the years I have learned that many times people say things out of ignorance.  They simply have the wrong information - we can thank the media for that.

And then there are all sorts of gradations of prejudice.  Some white people get along great with Black people, but couldn't imagine their kids marrying anyone of color.  Some white people don't think they have any prejudice in their bones but still say that "Mexicans are sneaking across the border" or use the term "illegal alien" -  (news flash--  the term is highly offensive).

These same people may be the ones who are lobbying Congress to stop the ICE raids.  

Its a confusing and complex world when it comes to race and ethnicity.  But Frank Rich has a point.  Not everybody is the same, and not everyone has the same prejudices.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/opinion/26rich.html?hp

In Defense of White Americans

New York Times

Opinion

October 27, 2008

by Frank Rich

the... less noticed lesson of the year has to do with the white people the McCain campaign has been pandering to. As we saw first in the Democratic primary results and see now in the widespread revulsion at the McCain-Palin tactics, white Americans are not remotely the bigots the G.O.P. would have us believe. Just because a campaign trades in racism doesn’t mean that the country is racist. It’s past time to come to the unfairly maligned white America’s defense.

for complete NYT article

Obama: the guy for the conservatives?

from the London Independent:

Andrew Keen: Conservative thoughts about Obama

October 27, 2008

Conservatives like the New York Times' David Brooks are thinking about Obama. And their thoughts are both very revealing and reassuringly confused. What Brooks - an authority on bourgeois bohemianism and a skilled archeologist of the human soul - isn't able to unearth is the slightest weakness, not even a chink in Obama's mental armor...

read more