July 02, 2008

The day's most interesting RANT

I'm okay, you need to be transformed


Who would have thought that Arianna Huffington and I spent our weekends in similar pursuits? Although admittedly the cars, houses and wardrobes probably differed. In her recent post on HuffPo, Ms. Huff enumerates the error of Senator Obama's ways in attempting to make himself more palatable to the mainstream voter or as she so eloquently puts it

Memo to Obama: Moving to the Middle is for Losers .

Now I admire Ms. Huff. She has an M. A. in Economics from Cambridge and has built HuffPo into a multi-million dollars blog all while being an extremely attractive, articulate and sometimes funny woman. I on the other hand took 20 years to graduate from the University of Tennessee and lost my home to foreclosure. Also, when it comes to specific qualifications for writing the afore linked to blog post, AH has been a two time loser in politics as well as totally shedding her political skin to find new life as the Queen of the Far Left. Neither of which should be held against her. The best lessons learned in life are often gleaned from loss and I myself am currently undergoing a political molting.

As for her advice to Senator Obama - how is it that so many politically astute people were unable to see until now that there is nothing - absolutely nothing - different about Senator Obama other than the color of his skin? To be honest, though, I can imagine their disappointment in finding that he is you average (well not average, he is a damn spot smarter than most pols) politician - no better, no worse. I have to admit that I'm a little disappointed myself in how quickly he has turned on his transformational self and I knew all along that he would. Throughout the campaign he has been less a candidate and more of a mannequin on which one could hang the clothes in one's own closet. Anyway, that's for Senator Obama, his handlers and his disciples to discuss - the fish I'm frying concerns is the disdain on which Ms. Huff and so many "progressives" hold the center of American politics.

I agree with AH that one should not heave ho bedrock principles in order to pander to the electorate yet I am puzzled. Do Ms. Huff and her far left cohorts not realize that many of the people that they say they want to help with their "progressive" agenda are the same people she holds in such low regard? She writes of a Midwest devastated by economic changes and yet she speaks of the 46% of them who found the charges of the Swift Boaters credible. Does she not know that many of these voters are one in the same? Devastated by economic changes and vulnerable to diversionary 527 ads? Am I reading her post correctly when I find that she would have Senator Obama just write these people off his list? When the Senator's adherents speak of his transforming the country, leading us all to the post partisan promised land, do they mean that only those who disagree with him need to be transformed, that only those who are drink from the cup of Obama will be allowed to cross over into the political Land of Canaan? All this time I thought all of us were in need of some kind of transformation, that post partisan meant getting beyond being on the left or on the right.

As a daughter of the South, I grew up hearing the admonition that certain types of behavior were "unbecoming". Being sullen was unbecoming, being catty was unbecoming. Well, I find the idea that anyone to the right of Arianna Huffington is unworthy of being dealt with is unbecoming the Democratic Party, just as I found the idea that anyone to the left of George Bush was a looney liberal unbecoming to the Republican Party. I'm no fan of Senator Obama. Over the weekend I had a discussion with my son about how BO has changed his position on as many issues in the last week as John McCain has since 2000. Still, I do think that one has to be elected and to govern not as the President of one segment of the population but as the President of all the people; that may not be progressive but it is politics and politics to paraphrase John Buchan is still amongst the best and most honorable professions.

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