Frank Rich: Party Like It’s 2008

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Almost every wrong prediction about this election cycle has come from those trying to force the round peg of this year’s campaign into the square holes of past political wars. That’s why race keeps being portrayed as dooming Mr. Obama — surely Jeremiah Wright = Willie Horton! — no matter what the voters say to the contrary. It’s why the Beltway took on faith the Clinton machine’s strategic, organization and fund-raising invincibility. It’s why some prognosticators still imagine that John McCain can spin the Iraq fiasco to his political advantage as Richard Nixon miraculously did Vietnam.

The year 2008 is far more complex — and exhilarating — than the old templates would have us believe. Of course we’re in pain. More voters think the country is on the wrong track (81 percent) than at any time in the history of New York Times/CBS News polling on that question. George W. Bush is the most unpopular president that any living American has known.

And yet, paradoxically, there is a heartening undertow: we know the page will turn. For all the anger and angst over the war and the economy, for all the campaign’s acrimony, the anticipation of ending the Bush era is palpable, countering the defeatist mood. The repressed sliver of joy beneath the national gloom can be seen in the record registration numbers of new voters and the over-the-top turnout in Democratic primaries.

Mr. Obama hardly created this moment, with its potent brew of Bush loathing and sweeping generational change. He simply had the vision to tap into it. Running in 2008 rather than waiting four more years was the single smartest political decision he’s made (and, yes, he’s made dumb ones too). The second smartest was to understand and emphasize that subterranean, nearly universal anticipation of change rather than settle for the narrower band of partisan, dyspeptic Bush-bashing. We don’t know yet if he’s the man who can make the moment — and won’t know unless he gets to the White House — but there’s no question that the moment has helped make the man.

For five years boomers have been asking, “Why are the kids not in the streets screaming about the war the way we were?” The simple answer: no draft. But as Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais show in “Millennial Makeover,” their book about the post-1982 American generation, that energy has been plowed into quieter social activism and grand-scale social networking, often linked on the same Web page. The millennials’ bottom-up digital superstructure was there to be mined, for an amalgam of political organizing, fund-raising and fun, and Mr. Obama’s camp knew how to work it. The part of the press that can’t tell the difference between Facebook and, say, AOL, was too busy salivating over the Clintons’ vintage 1990s roster of fat-cat donors to hear the major earthquake rumbling underground.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/opinion/11rich.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Frank Rich is the one writer who has understood this contest correctly every step of the way.

Can't wait to watch the debates. All the wireless-earplug-remote-coaching in the world won't save his ass from humiliating defeat.
I almost feel sorry for the old geezer. Then again, no I don't.

These repubs make their political fortunes on sympathy.

"Oh, bushco just isn't very smart but we like him" type stuff.

We're supposed to overlook the obvious flaws to find their "humanity." And by obvious flaws, I mean their politics.

..A few more obvious flaws: Ignorance, Absence of Empathy, Dishonesty, Lack of Language Skills, Anti-Social/Criminal Behavior and on and on and on......
No more "Good ol' Boys" occupying my White House, please.

Still remember how Farting Frank lied any lie about Al Gore in 2000. Made up the "Love Story" lie and kept repeating it, along with other bullshit like there wasn't a nickel's worth of difference between Bush and Gore. And how Frank loves having a beer with Gee Dubya. Maybe that's why this world crass pre$$titute is sorta civil toward Obama. Maybe this asshole's conscience reawakened and tortures him every night with the dreams of murdered Iraqi children night after night.

Hey Frank, How Do You Sleep????

So Sgt. Pepper took you by surprise
You better see right through that mother's eyes
Those freaks was right when they said you was dead
The one mistake you made was in your head
Ah, how do you sleep?
Ah, how do you sleep at night?

You live with straights who tell you you was king
Jump when your momma tell you anything
The only thing you done was yesterday
And since you're gone you're just another day
Ah, how do you sleep?
Ah, how do you sleep at night?

Ah, how do you sleep?
Ah, how do you sleep at night?

A pretty face may last a year or two
But pretty soon they'll see what you can do
The sound you make is muzak to my ears
You must have learned something in all those years
Ah, how do you sleep?
Ah, how do you sleep at night?