Sep 17 2008

“Community Agitator” Approach Indicates Flailing Obama Campaign

I had to steal a great line from Mark Levin today (I rarely listen to him these days, but beltway traffic can lead to long commutes with only AM talk radio as a companion). He called Barack Obama (and by extension his campaign) the Community Agitator, and it fits. We now see what Obama-Axelrod Axis of Muck is all about. We know they coordinate the message for the other talking heads and polls on the left. We know they authorize message focus and content. So why is the Obama-Axelrod communications effort now focused solely on connecting with the fevered swamps of the far left?

Example: KS Governor Sebelius has been the last in a long line of libs, dems and liberal media folks to raise the race card. All of a sudden there is this idoitic claim that to oppose Obama is to be racist, like somehow that will cower whites into voting for Obama. Will it work? I seriously doubt it and I think it will have a huge backlash.

I don’t give a damn about Obama’s race, and I show my respect towards him by dealing with my differences and concerns on policy and judgement. I measure Obama on the content of his ideas and judgement (which are sorely lacking given his position on the Surge in Iraq, his duplicitious comments on withdrawing troops, free trade, raising taxes, pretending that taxing companies won’t impact the consumers and workers for those companies, etc). If someone tries to claim my concerns are racist it only removes any option to give him the benefit of some doubt.

Benefit of doubt and faith come from respecting the person you will bestow it on. If I am being asked to FORGET the issues and focus on his race – against all my values and morals – and vote race only then I have no respect from which to build a foundation of confidence. Most white people are not racist at all, and are repulsed by claims to the contrary. If you want to push someone away who is on the fence, insult them and their honor. Works every time.

And what about all the juvenile personal jabs at McCain and Palin? Why the childish chants – you have the emotionally stunted KoS Kids and DU denizens in your camp. Why take on the personna of the most vile and repulsive elements of the far left? Who are you trying to convince? Are you losing the hyper partisan nutroot crowd now as well?

And the liberal media has sunk into the exact same cesspool. Don’t take my word for it, here is someone from the left who is just reeling from the stench now eminating from the Obama-Axelrod Axis of Muck:

I think when journalists wallow in that nonsense for so long and pretend it’s newsworthy and important, the coverage of a truly important story (e.g. what the media have now identified as the Republican candidate for president trying to lie his way into the White House) comes across as just another trivial pursuit. For news consumers, it comes across as just more forced cable chatter because there’s no seriousness left in the entire endeavor.

Again, just look at the absurdity of Matthews’ performance. He basically devoted an entire program to addressing the question of whether McCain’s camp really thought Obama was referring to Palin with his lipstick comment.The entire program. And then within minutes, Matthews announced that the story insulted everyone’s intelligence.

Obvious question: So why spend an hour talking about it?

The crap coming out now trying to be passed off as serious debate on issues important to American is pathetic and prime examples of what America is fed up with. Howdoes Sarah Palin’s personally purchased tanning bed impact ANYTHING related to my family, their security and their future? This IS the reason 80% of the nation says this country is off track.

The Obama-Axelrod team seems to be trying a combination of community agitator mixed in with Chicago political machine grace. Obama’s campaign resembles the anarchist crowds who riot and burn in anger that the world doesn’t revolve around their immature and naive fantasies of Nirvana. Again, I am not the only one sitting here scratching my head trying to understand how any of this griping and mudslinging is going to engage serious, mature adults.

Example 1 from the left:

Some Democrats are getting very concerned, and they have been making their concerns known to the Obama campaign. “We’re familiar with this,” Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, told The New York Times a few days ago. “And I’m sure between now and Nov. 4 there will be another period of hand-wringing and bed-wetting. It comes with the territory.” 

On Tuesday, I spoke to four prominent Democratic strategists, all of whom have had major roles in past presidential campaigns. I didn’t find any wet beds or wrung hands, but there was a white knuckle or two.

Bed wetting? If this is how these Neanderthals talk about their political allies in public just think of the trash talking going on in private. No decorum, no seriousness. They want to run for the most powerful and prestigious office in the land and they act like a bad rerun of Animal House (see if you can guess what they are now?).

Example 2 from the left:

This is more than my opinion. The Democracy Corps survey released yesterday proves the case beyond a reasonable doubt. Backed by a wealth of persuasive detail, here is the nub of their conclusion:

In the absence of a coherent change message from Obama, many voters are accepting McCain’s definition, particularly since they want to change Washington and clean up government. As a result, Obama has lost his double-digit advantage over McCain on the right kind of change.

When I say you have no message, here’s what I mean:

You can read his take on it, but what he is saying is focus on handful of priorities and nail them home. Priorities important to Americans! Not McCain’s war injuries and how they effect his ability to use a computer and email. Explain to me what this has to do with the economy and health care? As noted above, this is the garbage the campaign and media spend the most time on. Matters of national interest get lost in the mud.

Exmaple 3 – former major Hillary supporter:

A top Hillary Rodham Clinton fundraiser threw her support behind Republican John McCain on Wednesday, saying he will lead the country in a centrist fashion and accusing the Democrats of becoming too extreme.

“I believe that Barack Obama, with MoveOn.org and Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean, has taken the Democratic Party — and they will continue to — too far to the left,” Lynn Forester de Rothschild said. “I’m not comfortable there.”

“I believe that the McCain-Palin government will be a centrist government,” Rothschild said. “It’s not going to be an ideological government.”

And Let’s not forget how the Obama-Axelrod Axis of Muck can’t let go of the Palin phenom and have sided with a louse of a man, married 4 times and proven to have tasered his step son and threatened Sarah Palin’s father with murder if anyone tried to help rescue his poor ex-wife from his little hell hole. Still wondering what this has to do with energy independence – sounds more like the Enquirer.

Obama is losing the centrist argument, and therefore the political center who select the winners in these national elections. His hyperpartisan all-day-kegger PR plan is not playing well, and is more embarrasment than inspirational.

Look, Axelrod and Obama are in the big leagues using gutter politics that might play in Chicago but will get you slammed nationally. We don’t want a national debate to be like reading the rantings over at the Kos Kids Klub. 

I can see the polls starting to even back out on the national level, so I am wondering if this childish mud slinging can actually work. But I think the Obama camp is losing it and it will take time for the polls to rebound. Obama is getting a second look after the Palin announcement. People are coming down off their high. But they are not abandoning McCain-Palin. They are giving the kid from Chicago one last opportunity since they were with him for so long.

The problem is the hope and positive tone of the campaign is gone – replaced by extreme examples of what American hate about our nation’s politics right now. These quippy little sound bites without any substance drove the Congressional ratings into historic lows. Yet this is the model the left is trying one last time – with energy – to bring to save Obama?

Color me Pollyannish and confident this approach is NOT what America saw when they listened to Obama’s vision. They saw better times, civil discourse, glimpses of hands reaching across aisles to do the right thing. All that is gone now in the Obama message. It is doom, gloom, hate and bile. I am not predicting this will turn around, I am now praying it does. Because if it doesn’t the left will have tarnished this nation’s reputation and image so deeply it may never recover.

We don’t need four more years of partisan bickering and mudslinging. But if the Obama campaign of today is any indication – that is all he is offering.

7 responses so far

7 Responses to ““Community Agitator” Approach Indicates Flailing Obama Campaign”

  1. crosspatch says:

    Lately a local radio station has been running the Jerry Doyle show. He isn’t Republican or Democrat but leans conservative. Excellent programming. I have been looking forward to listening lately. My only problem is that he sounds a little like Savage with that accent of his and I think I tuned past his show a few times because I thought it was Savage from the sound of the voice. Once you get past that, his show is very good.

    http://www.jerrydoyle.com/

  2. kathie says:

    If McCain wins there is no way we will have civility. It is not just George Bush that the left hates, it is all republicans, John was only liked because he tried to make Bush look foolish. A hole bunch of people need to grow up!

  3. sbd says:

    Hi AJ,

    Have you seen my post here ?

    The Dems just don’t get it and are spiraling down the black hole of no return. How they think breaking into Palin’s personal email account is going to help them is a sign of how desperate they really are!!

    SBD

  4. MerlinOS2 says:

    I seems they are will to go anywhere now
    http://www.savingbristol.com/page2.html

    Never in history has a woman been under more pressure to keep an unwanted pregnancy than Bristol Palin. She is the teenage daughter of Alaska Governor & Vice-Presidential hopeful Sarah Palin – a conservative, Creationist Christian power-vampire and pro-life huckster who has put Bristol and her un-welcomed fetus at the center of a politico-religious crusade to stop her exercising her constitutional right to terminate the pregnancy.

    Rather than sit back and impotently bemoan Bristol’s tragic, lonely circumstance, it is time for us – the silent majority – to unite behind this poor, imprisoned woman and save her from both a tyrannical household as well as the horrible nightmare of a forced childbirth.

    These are not empty words. I, Doug Stanhope, am offering you, Bristol Palin, the sum of 25,000 dollars so that you can abort your child and move out of that draconian home. I have also set up a PayPal link so that others around the world can help increase this amount to ease the burden of starting out on your own at such an early age.

    I was once in a similar situation where I’d accidentally impregnated a girl and she had to make that same fateful decision that now faces you. It was easy for her – she didn’t have a fascist, oligarch parent, the entire Republican Party or the sneering eyes of the Christian Right to contend with, much less a daft, puppet boyfriend who’s just waiting for the cameras to stop rolling so he can bolt like a gazelle.

    We made the right choice and rather than end up bitter rivals in court battles over custody or support, we are great friends who high-five over our decision and have all the free time and disposable income that young mothers never know. I now pay it forward and offer some of that money to you.

    You don’t need to ruin your future in order to support the megalomaniacal self-promotion of a mother whose every action is rooted in a demonic ego and archaic superstition. Don’t become victim of the same pressure that had your brother “volunteering” for duty in Iraq.

    Please consider my offer as time is of the essence. You don’t want this child, the father certainly doesn’t want this child and the world doesn’t need another wailing mouth to feed.

    I empathize with the amount of attention, pressure and possibly out-right threats you are getting to give birth against your will and I understand that at your age, you may go through with it no matter how much you don’t want to. Either way, you have inspired me to try to make a difference.

    Even if you cannot take my offer, I will still use my money or money donated through this page to pay for at least one abortion for a disadvantaged teenage girl each year for the rest of my life in the name of your mother. And in my will, I shall have a good portion of my estate turned into the Sarah J Palin Abortion Fund that will help girls from all walks of life from destroying their lives and our natural resources by having children.

    You are not alone, Bristol. There are many of us out here who care.

    Please show Bristol you care by either donating or signing the guestbook to let her know that there is true love for her outside of her current surroundings.

    UPDATE:

    So as to negate any rumor-mongering that I seek to profit from this, I have changed the link so that any donations will go directly to http://www.LilithFund.org, a group that assists woman who need assistance paying for abortions. And I’ll raise my own offer to Bristol to $50,000 to keep up with the crashing US dollar.

  5. MerlinOS2 says:

    http://www.savingbristol.com/page2.html

    Seems I have another post caught in moderation but there is someone offering Bristol Palin 25k to abort her child.

  6. Terrye says:

    Hey Aj:

    I saw this at wikipedia {I know it is not the best source} but I thought it was worth passing along. Read to the last line. Obama is going after McCain on the wall street stuff and I think it is hurting, but look who works for Obama:

    Franklin Delano Raines (born January 14, 1949 in Seattle, Washington) is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Fannie Mae who served as White House budget director under President Bill Clinton. He is currently employed by Barack Obama’s Presidential Campaign as an economic adviser.

    The son of a Seattle janitor [1], Raines graduated from Harvard University, Harvard Law School; and Magdalen College, Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He served in the Carter Administration as associate director for economics and government in the Office of Management and Budget and assistant director of the White House Domestic Policy Staff from 1977 to 1979. Then he joined Lazard Freres and Co., where he worked for 11 years and became a general partner. In 1991 he became Fannie’s Mae’s Vice Chairman, a post he left in 1996 in order to join the Clinton Administration as the Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, where he served until 1998. In 1999, he returned to Fannie Mae as CEO, “the first black man to head a Fortune 500 company.”[1]

    On December 21, 2004 Raines accepted what he called “early retirement” [2] from his position as CEO while U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigators continued to investigate alleged accounting irregularities. He is accused by The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), the regulating body of Fannie Mae, of abetting widespread accounting errors, which included the shifting of losses so senior executives, such as himself, could earn large bonuses [3].

    In 2006, the OFHEO announced a suit against Raines in order to recover some or all of the $50 million in payments made to Raines based on the overstated earnings [4] initially estimated to be $9 billion but have been announced as 6.3 billion.[2].

    Civil charges were filed against Raines and two other former executives by the OFHEO in which the OFHEO sought $110 million in penalties and $115 million in returned bonuses from the three accused.[5] On April 18, 2008, the government announced a settlement with Raines together with J. Timothy Howard, Fannie’s former chief financial officer, and Leanne G. Spencer, Fannie’s former controller. The three executives agreed to pay fines totaling about $3 million, which will be paid by Fannie’s insurance policies. Raines also agreed to donate the proceeds from the sale of $1.8 million of his Fannie stock and to give up stock options. The stock options however have no value. Raines also gave up an estimated $5.3 million of “other benefits” said to be related to his pension and forgone bonuses.[6]

    An editorial in The Wall Street Journal called it a “paltry settlement” which allowed Raines and the other two executives to “keep the bulk of their riches.” [7] In 2003 alone, Raines’s compensation was over $20 million.[3]

    A statement issued by Raines said of the consent order, “is consistent with my acceptance of accountability as the leader of Fannie Mae and with my strong denial of the allegations made against me by OFHEO.”[4]

    In a settlement with OFHEO and the Securities and Exchange Commission, Fannie paid a record $400 million civil fine. Fannie, which is the largest American financier and guarantor of home mortgages, also agreed to make changes in its corporate culture and accounting procedures and ways of managing risk. [8]

    In June 2008 Wall Street Journal reported that Franklin Raines was one of several politicians who received below market rates loans at Countrywide Financial because the corporation considered the officeholders “FOA’s”–“Friends of Angelo” (Countrywide Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo). He received loans for over $3 million while CEO of Fannie Mae. [5] Franklin Raines is currently one of Barack Obama’s economic advisers.

  7. dave m says:

    Countries can recover from electing the Left.
    Look at the last days of the leftist government in England. They
    had a long run, but since Gordon Brown took over and pulled a
    little further leftwards, the government is now 28 points behind
    the Conservatives. They have a three party system over there,
    and the even further left leaning Liberal Democrat party are in third
    place with only 12 points. About a year and a half ago, the government
    there was consistently 10 points ahead of the Conservatives so that’s
    a whopping 38 point swing in a year.

    People figure it out eventually. The risk for America is whether we
    will have the TIME to figure it out. The UK wasn’t facing the imminent
    threats of mass destruction in the last decade when they had their big
    lefty experiment. I fear we do not have that luxury.