Let's All Party Like It's 1932 -- The Obama Option

As a former Kucinich supporter, I came reluctantly to the Obama camp.

But then the M$M raised the issue of a daishiki-clad minister saying the GD words about America. So I expected Sen Obama to politely back away from this minister, but instead he presented us with a very reasoned speech about the issues that had faced older people of color.

Like Jon Stewart said 36 hours later: On a Tuesday at 11 o'clock in the morning, A politician addressed the American people, on the issue of race, as though we were adults.

I fell for Obama, hook, line and sinker.

Then yesterday, John Q Citizen posted his personal experience with the O. campaign team leaders that he found roaming around out in Montana.
You can find his discussion here:
http://tinyurl.com/5svzqo

Now another favorite writer weighs in with his take on this -- Norman Solomon offers up this:
Let's Party Like It's 1932: The Obama Option
By Norman Solomon


Seventy-six years ago, to many ears on the left, Franklin D. Roosevelt sounded way too much like a centrist. True, he was eloquent, and he'd generated enthusiasm in a Democratic base eager to evict Republicans from the White House. But his campaign was moderate -- with policy proposals that didn't indicate he would try to take the country in bold new directions if he won the presidency.
Yet FDR's triumph in 1932 opened the door for progressives. After several years of hitting the Hoover administration's immovable walls, the organizing capacities of labor and other downtrodden constituencies could have major impacts on policy decisions in Washington.

Today, segments of the corporate media have teamed up with the Clinton campaign to attack Barack Obama. Many of the rhetorical weapons used against him in recent weeks -- from invocations of religious faith and guns to flag-pin lapels -- may as well have been ripped from a Karl Rove playbook. The key subtexts have included racial stereotyping and hostility to a populist upsurge.

Do we have a major stake in this fight? Does it really matter whether Hillary Clinton or Obama wins the Democratic nomination? Is it very important to prevent John McCain from moving into the White House? The answers that make sense to me are yes, yes and yes.

¥ ¥ ¥
In 1932, there were scant signs that Franklin Delano Roosevelt might become a progressive president. By the summer of that election year, when he accepted the Democratic Party's nomination for president, his "only left-wing statements had been exceedingly vague," according to FDR biographer Frank Freidel.
Full Story is at

http://www.coastalpost.com/08/05/24.html

Read your history, folks. This is a one-in-76 year opportunity, so let's not blow it.

And also remember that Hoover sucked up 37% of the vote that year. Nowadays in the age of television and the Internet, there is no excuse not to push that number below 30%. I doubt if more than 5% of the voting population has prospered in the last 8 years, so keeping the number of people voting directly against their own best interests to 1 in 4 is a good one. :headbang:

Only I hope Barack has quit smoking. But, that said, I see potential greatness.

http://www.davidswanson.org/?q=node/1089

I think the left is doing what it can with what it's got to work with.

I've noticed that almost every activist I like and respect is backing Obama. Winona LaDuke was in Missoula back in March, and she said during an interview on the local MT public radio that her and Ralph are still good friends, and they talk once in a while. She said she is voting for Obama this year and that everyone should get out and vote for who they want to.

I'm not voting for Obama because he has enunciated a majoritarian platform to rival Kucinich. I'm voting for him because he has succeeded in motivating, empowering and training up a grassroots movement among those that for whatever reason Kucinich never could get to respond to him.

A million and a half individual contributions for a primary is breathtaking, absofuckinglutly unbelievable.

Now we have to win the GE, and then we have to work our asses off to get some meaningful change. Some change away from the fascism, the corporatism, and toward social and economic justice.

If we are lucky, Obama will be our foot in the door. We will have a heck of a lot more to do though before we have truly arrived.

FDR did not have enough delegates going in and did not win on the first ballot.

That being said, I like the analogy that Solomon makes regarding a populist upsurge.