Random Musings On a Stormy Sunday

I've spoken previously about my impressions of the Obama campaign, particularly commenting on their focus on outreach to donors, rather than just sending out e-mails or letters asking you to send more money. Another point worth making. If you have e-mail, they never send anything through the mail system. It all goes electronic. The tempo of e-mails is never intrusive or excessive. Maybe one every three or four days, at most, each very different from any previous one. Almost all of them suggesting things that one can do to help the campaign beyond just donating money. Very, very smart. People (opponents) speak of Obama building a "movement", usually in a dismissive tone of voice, as though that is somehow cheesy or not playing by grownup rules, and they are probably right.

I have heard people speak of this phenomena as unlike anything they have seen since the McCarthy era, or Bobby Kennedy. I do not recall either as having this character. What I am wondering is whether Uncle Bob can help us by comparing and contrasting this with FDR. It seems to me that may have been one of the last eras when there was a sense that the nation had a responsibility to unite and correct the terrible conditions spawned by the Depression. My wife hangs out a bit at a local coffee joint run by a remarkable lady who lived through hard times in San Diego before the war. She says things were so bad that that many families were housed in an enormous tent community. She speaks of getting rickets as a child and having a doctor who worked there as part of the public health system tell her family she needed to eat a lot of oranges to get over it. We don't think of ourselves as being a country in which people go hungry, or live in tent cities like refugee, or in which people are dangerously undernourished through lack of good food. But it was true then, and while hidden, sadly it remains true now. As with the effects of a poor education, the effects of poor nutrition as a child creates consequences that impact and impair that individual throughout their life. The effects can be both physical and mental. By some measures the effects of malnutrition can be seen in as much as a third of the world's population, and the breadth of those problems are likely to increase as populations increase during this century. The Bush administration(s), deeply in the thrall of fundamentalists who suspect Jesus may be due back any minute, have never been big on the idea of population control, fearing that it might lead to recreational sex, or thwart the destiny of the "unborn", or lead to abortions or promote licentiousness among the young. Meanwhile, the world's population, particularly in poor countries with marginal land resources, continues to grow beyond the ability of that land to support their populations.

And sadly, holding large rock concerts and sending food from overseas is not a sustainable solution to a structural problem within a given country. It certainly makes every one feel good and feel noble, but it fails to address the long term structural issues. Many of those issues may be impossible to solve, due to political impediments. Just like the impediments in our country. But at the very least we can get our own house in order before we lecture other nations. We can, if we have the political and moral will to do it, create a better and more egalitarian society. Will Barack Obama, one man, be able to do it all by himself? Impossible. Even if he has the will to do so, and is able to engage large sections of our population, is it possible? It would still be a stretch, but that a task may be out of reach is no reason not to attempt it. Of the candidates running for President in 2008 he seems the most likely to accomplish something. Instead of nothing, or worse, which I think will be seen as the true legacy of the Bush administration. 19% approval rating. That was similar to the approval rating of General Musharaff just before his political party lost the parliamentary elections by 230 to 40. I personally can think of an entire list of Republican foot-soldiers and camp followers that I would like to see be driven into the political wilderness. And there are a host of them that I just haven't paid much attention to. If, as I suspect, Obama is the nominee, and if he is not killed during the campaign by a crazed racist seeking to create chaos and race war, I am inclined to think that Obama will have long, long coat tails. It has been a long time since we have seen a Democratic President in office with a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a comfortable margin in the House.

By coincidence, here is the Obama campaign sending out a list of the things you might want to read, watch, discuss, make phone calls to support, oh... and maybe even donate to, so that they can reach their goal of a million donors. It is sad that the campaigns are often judged by the media by how much money they can raise. Or from how many donors. But that is the world we live in, those are the childish measures by which political campaigns are judged to either be relevant or irrelevant. We need to work to change that, but during this campaign we must work with what we have. A donation of even as little as a dollar serves to add another "donor" to the list edging toward a million (it is currently in the low 900,000s) and this is the only funds appeal that you are ever going to hear from me. For as little as a dollar, or whatever feels comfortable, you will also have the opportunity to see what I have been seeing, which is outreach a political organization that appears to be rewriting the rules. Without exaggeration, I think after a couple of weeks you will begin to see the same thing I am seeing, that something quite unusual is happening.

And since the media seems to be composed of well-dressed sheep, bleating in harmony as they prostrate themselves before power, the numbers of donors will drive them into paroxysms of delight and wonder. To see the news pundits turn themselves into fools in public and struggle to explain what part of the Republican "message" has gone so terribly wrong this years... well hey, that's a sight that's got to be worth a buck or two, right?

p.s. I have heard a number of Republicans recently say that they think McCain is not quite right in the head, which they think is a consequence of his long imprisonment. Again, I would defer to Uncle Bob in that regard, though I think Bob would tell us that McCain's experience was by far the harsher of the two. Am I right? Does terribly harsh imprisonment lead to emotional damage? Or is McCain just a Republican?

Arthur

(Bad Hat Alert: The Clinton campaign is winding down. Click here. For an update on the Obamma campaign, click here. )