She Hit Me Too Hard!

September 4, 2008

Early this morning, sometime around 3a.m., which is apparently the time when the Obama campaign sends out all of its messages, I got one from “David Plouffe,” and hell if it wasn’t the whiniest thing I’d ever heard/read/whatever in my life. Never mind that the creme de la creme of the lefty blogosphere has very little to go on (”Oh, so she gave a good speech? Well…BARACK IS CHANGE!”), the lefty leadership the lefty leadership has been reduced to missives I used to fire off at my parents when my brother would fight me for my crayons.

Some of my favorite parts:

I saw John McCain’s attack squad of negative, cynical politicians. They lied about Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and they attacked you for being a part of this campaign.

Wait…isn’t this the same campaign that has done nothing but sniff arrogantly at the thought of a small town mayor on the ticket of a national party? Aren’t they the ones who put Joe Biden in the second place spot so that he could fill in the blanks when Obama encounters something slightly above his pay grade? And as far as I know, having read the speech and now seen it twice including excepts, Sarah Palin and the lineup last night doesn’t appear to have lied about…well, anything. Say what you want about how good of an indictment it is of the Obama campaign, but surely the only thing David Plouffe can think that the Republican Party lied about is that we had a weak veep candidate.

But thats not the best part:

But worst of all — and this deserves to be noted — they insulted the very idea that ordinary people have a role to play in our political process.

Really? Really?…because they said that being a mayor gave you more executive experience than being a community organizer? I’ve been a community organizer. I got a lot of experience taking snotty remarks from people that didn’t want you to bug them, and cleaned a lot of weird stains out of tee shirts; I drank a lot of coffee and wore out a few pairs of sneakers. I didn’t learn how to manage employees. I learned how to wrangle other people. I didn’t do budgets. And I certainly didn’t do such a good job that I got nominated for governor of a large, resource rich state.

What the Republican party did do, however, is nominate someone who actually is an ordinary person. Sarah Palin didn’t get up there last night and deliver a standard speech. She got up there, introduced her family, talked about what it meant to be a small-town girl in America, talk about her experiences growing up in Alaska, talk about how those experiences influence her ideological outlook, and how she — the hockey mom, PTA organizer, wife and mother — was going to Washington to change things from the outside. She, an ordinary person who went into politics for the right reasons, has an opportunity to make a real difference in how this nation operates. Sure, the Obama campaign has been championing their Savior as nothing more than an ordinary man from the streets of Chicago, and to some degree, he is. But that ended around the same time he started shopping for arugula at the Whole Foods; I certainly can’t say when, but I can put it this way — I don’t think anyone really thinks Obama is an example of the “ordinary person.” At least, not after last night.

And as for this…

Both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin specifically mocked Barack’s experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago, where he worked with people who had lost jobs and been left behind when the local steel plants closed. …

Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies.

I am almost tempted to quote Ed verbatim, because its just so dead on I can’t really come up with a better way to say it, but the comparison between Obama and Palin (and seriously…we’re making comparisons between a Presidential contender and a vice Presidential contender) ends up with Palin on top…no contest. Sure, Obama was a community organizer, but then he joined the very local government that he was protesting against, and became another cog in the Chicago machine. Sarah Palin got into office in Alaska, and like the pit bull with lipstick she describes herself as, promptly turned on corrupt government officials, even the ones in her own party. She actually changed something. She didn’t just use the word.

My favorite part of this, and its worth repeating because the last time I mentioned it, it was in parenthesis, is that, after last night, Barack Obama has been reduced to competing against a Vice Presidential nominee. She can deliver speeches; she has a strong and compelling personality, and she can hit…hard. If, anything, she is the right’s answer to Obama (possibly complete with the legions of adoring fans). But that’s not how its supposed to be. Obama is supposed to be challenging McCain. Palin is just the back end of the ticket — the person who is supposed to fill in the policy gaps and provide the wow factor. McCain is where the meat and potatoes is. The problem? Personality, grandiose speeches and a cult of followers can only compete, head to head, with its mirror image, sort of like how Spock and Evil Spock had to duke it out after the Enterprise went through a time warp back in the day. In order to compete with policy, experience and trustworthiness, you have to possess all those things. We’ve seen, over the course of the last week that Camp Obama has chosen its enemy, and its not the man at the top.

Guess they met their match.

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