EJ Dionne: Obama’s Weather Balloon

from Truthdig:



Obama’s Weather Balloon

Posted on May 8, 2008
By E.J. Dionne

WASHINGTON—Barack Obama’s victory in the North Carolina primary was actually the second important election result for his campaign this month.

The first, which has not received enough notice, was the triumph of Louisiana Democrat Don Cazayoux in the race for an open U.S. House seat despite an aggressive Republican campaign to link the moderate Cajun to Obama, liberalism and high taxes.

That the Obama link did not bring down Cazayoux in a district that voted 59 percent for George W. Bush in 2004 will help reassure Democratic superdelegates from Republican-leaning districts that they can live with Obama at the top of their party’s ticket.

And the failure of old GOP tactics of liberalism-by-association and taxophobia was “a sharp wake-up call for Republicans,” in the view of no less an authority than former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

In an important manifesto published this week in the conservative magazine Human Events, Gingrich warned that “the Republican brand has been so badly damaged that if Republicans try to run an anti-Obama, anti-Reverend Wright, or (if Senator Clinton wins), anti-Clinton campaign, they are simply going to fail.”

Significantly, Gingrich argued that the Republican Party’s weakness could “ultimately outweigh” the “personal appeal” of presumptive Republican nominee John McCain and “drag his candidacy into defeat.” ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080508_obamas_weather_balloon/

They tied him to a winner. And - news flash - "liberal" is officially off the 7 Dirty Words list, having been replaced by "conservative."

I'm unapologetically LIBERAL and proud of it!!!

How does E.J. Dionne know? How does anybody know how anybody "voted"--when all of our votes are tallied by rightwing Bushite corporations, using 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, with virtually no audit/recount controls, abetted by electronic voter purges, rampant vote suppression, egregious violations of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and DoJ political interference?

When pundits and others routinely state the results of such elections as fact, they are either helping to cover up the biggest scandal in our history--the fascist coup that occurred with the fast-tracking of non-transparent voting systems all over the country, during the 2002 to 2004 period--or they are displaying their vast ignorance about our voting system and about what democracy is.

Bush's "re-election" has not been, and cannot be, proven. And the fact that it cannot be proven IS fascism-- the welding of state power (elections) with private business corporations ("trade secret" vote counting), resulting in rule by a repressive, wealthy minority. Some fascist cabals achieve it through military coups. This one achieved it by a private, corporate putsch in the election system itself.

And it really pisses me off when "liberal" and even many leftist pundits unthinkingly repeat the results of our elections as if they were provable and valid.