Friday, April 18

Like Last Night's Corn-On-The-Cob, This Too Shall Pass.

DAVID Brooks rewrites his blog entry of the day before--did the Times pay for this twice?
When Obama goes to a church infused with James Cone-style liberation theology, when he makes ill-informed comments about working-class voters, when he bowls a 37 for crying out loud, voters are going to wonder if he’s one of them.

So that we note here that the latest in a twelvemonth of bumfucked election pundidiotcy, and the sort of People magazine indicators of electability they espouse in Brooks' "moderate" "Conservative" circles, when they put down the Burke omnibus long enough, has led to David Brooks criticizing another man's athletic ability. Jesus wept.

We might also note that it's emboldened Brooks enough that he's snuck back to the fifth or sixth row of the Republican mob, wherever it is that he needs to stand to make sure those wienie-armed rock tosses of his don't actually hit his own people.
Back in Iowa, Barack Obama promised to be something new — an unconventional leader who would confront unpleasant truths, embrace novel policies and unify the country. If he had knocked Hillary Clinton out in New Hampshire and entered general-election mode early, this enormously thoughtful man would have become that.

But he did not knock her out, and the aura around Obama has changed. Furiously courting Democratic primary voters and apparently exhausted, Obama has emerged as a more conventional politician and a more orthodox liberal.

Wellll...okay. From my perch on the banks of the West Fork of the Mighty White his commercials make him seem a more "orthodox" liberal these days, but I'd suggest that's because the tanking economy has made that a much more comfortable place to operate from. And economic flip-floppery is the most accepted form, so I wouldn't exactly consider that a liability. I just think it's curious that the same people who used to scream about the great levels of diversity in a Republican party that voted en bloc for twenty-five years can't tell the difference between Obama's centrism and liberal "orthodoxy". But maybe that's just me.

So my take (aimai notes Obama acolytes making lemonaide out of Lemon Pledge) is that he might've have knocked Clinton out in January if he'd actually been an "orthodox Liberal", but back then that attitude just got you lectured on how old-timers didn't understand The New Politics. Or not in the way David Brooks did. And had that, or anything else, actually knocked Senator Clinton out of the race last January, whatever it was would now be the subject of Brooks' Obama Is Doomed column today.

I'm almost positive you have more invested in this than I, since I was basically born disappointed, and I can't imagine you'd be checking in here for a pep talk, but here goes: these people have been full of shit all along; today is not different. Obama supporters should have listened, should have been fighting Chris Matthews and Tim Russert instead of Bill and Hillary Clinton, should have been less assured that dummied-up racism was what they were going to face in the general, and a little more concerned with how they were going to answer the charges McCain would make, with an assist from that same Press that so loved Obama a few weeks ago. Finally, at this point, they should have learned that pre-season polls don't mean any more in April than they did in October, and overreaction is worse than no reaction at all. They knew better than the rest of us, and all people who refuse any lesson at all wind up learning the same way.

So, buck up; despite the fact that there are people out there who still say, "These attacks play right into his hands, because it lets him decry his attackers", many of them will be dead come election day, killed by using a fork to extract stuck toast one too many times, and what passes for "reality" will prevail. And it will not be kind to John McCain.

9 comments:

heydave said...

I can't offer anything, I'm just too pissed off at Bobo slinging that "one of them" shit lines around and envisioning how he'd look as we kicked his ass down at the local watering hole.

But we're like that.

McWyrm said...

Hmmm ...is this directed at any observable set of Obama supporters, or are you addressing a host of straw men? As far as I can see, nobody ever based their expectations for Obama on the good will of David Brooks.

It is possible that I�m wrong � maybe the country is full of bitter Obama supporters who�d hoped to see their man cost into the White House on the power of adoring press coverage. But I�ve never heard anything about it. Perhaps you could provide a link? A reference? A quote?

Mr. Riley, I know that you perceive some grave insult constantly and repeatedly directed at you from the Obama camp . I don't know why. I do know that the grudge you've been carrying against the Obama campaign has rendered you unable to write a coherent column for some weeks now. I do hope you recover from this unfortunate handicap. I generally enjoy your work, and look forward to enjoying it again someday.

Anonymous said...

Brooks should listen to the glee of Colbert's audience.

November should perforce wipe these smug jerks off their fartinfested seats in front of the talkinghead camera. Hopefully it will also kill Serious Teevee once and for all.

I'm such a Pollyanna

his (X) moniker

Pookapooka

Anonymous said...

Mr. Riley,

I'm sorry, but I don't think your last paragraph is an accurate description of what's ahead. The Democratic Party, no slouches they when it comes to self-inflicted wounds, have succeeded in setting those disadvantaged by race and gender against one another. A remarkable achievement, but, alas, one that will result in the swearing-in of Poopdeck Pappy in January '09.

Jaye Ramsey Sutter said...

PT kicked my ass today. And I think that Doghouse is the last free voice that hasn't been smothered by the pillow of Obamania.

Anonymous said...

Mr. MCWYRM, when you get a moment, go look at the comments at Talking Points Memo, or Kos, or Huffpo, or the letters in response to any story at Salon that mentions the Democratic primary.

Apart from a general lack of tolerance to opposing views, see if you don't notice a whole bunch of posts asserting that Hillery is (a) evil, (b) broadly hated, (c) will motivate the GOP GOTV, (d) which means she can't win the general, and (e) only Obama has the right stuff to win.

Perhaps some of that was true when HC was the front runner. But Obama pulled ahead and the GOP/media slime machine changed targets. Its not just Brooks, its systemic. And all the happy talk about a new way of campaigning will not save BO or alter 230 years of election slime, ratfucking, and politics as usual.

If I may presume, I believe that's the "reality" to which Mr. O'Riley refers. Cynical? Sure. A grudge against the Obama Camp? Only if an ongoing refusal to do "audacity of hope" shooters can be called a grudge.

Anonymous said...

It's a standard meme these days. Anyone who isn't sufficiently worshipful of the One gets slimed. If you read Doghouse at all, a consistent theme of his work is the cynicism bred of watching a Democratic Party whose candidates routinely cower, shuffle, and doubletalk rather than forthrightly defend liberal values. If his experience of that means that he doesn't do a curtsey before your candidate when he talks about Unity and how Reagan was teh Man, then you'll just have to be disappointed. Somehow I think he'll bear it.

Anonymous said...

The Democratic party didn't pit Obama and Clinton against eachother in the final run; the public did. If you recall, there were quite a few other candidates whose throng of supporters either mysteriously disappeared prior to vote-time (Drudge -- wanna get a piece of that action?), or the electorate wanted a woman and a dark skinned person to go to the white house.

This "choose" thing really wrankles me. As a women I can say I'm tired of the quoted "bad decision" to put a woman and a black man up for candidacy. Anyone not a member of the white male group/individuals, is told first to wait until we're called. When their attention is drawn to our tired and angry personage, waiting outside in the rain, we are then blamed for not taking initiative to get inside where we were told we have to wait for an invite. WTF, its a trick.

Furthermore, who the hell appointed the white male to decide when the non-white non males get to step up? Damn.

As for Obama himself, is he really participating in the obscufation of ole' Ronnie's history?

Actually I don't find the present campaigning too bad, Hillary stays on as the taskmaster while Obama cuts his teeth.

I really think HC is the shark, but I guess a brightly colored parrot-fish with little serrated teeth will have to do.

McWyrm said...

Mr. Cheddar;

I will concede that commenters on innumerable websites have said imprudent things about Ms. Clinton. This admission does not conflict with my previous argument. In particular, it does not refute the assertion that no Obama supporter has placed adoring media coverage at the center of a proposed Obama campaign strategy.

Further, I feel it is germane to note that I do not habitually read comments at TPM, et al. This is mostly due to the high concentration of predictable and inane snipping one encounters. Normally, I seek out writers who aspire to more than compulsive drum-beating. In the past I had considered Mr. Riley to be such a writer, and I hope that he will be again in the future.

I read with interest Mr. Riley's handling of Obama's remarks on Regan. I was less impressed, however, with Riley's odd obsession with Obama's use of vocal dynamics or the repeated knee-jerk cries of treachery whenever it is pointed out that younger voters tend strongly Democratic. I am not a partisan, but Riley's obsessive bludgeoning of Obama on bizarre trivialities is rather off-putting.