Alexander Cockburn - Column by Alexander Cockburn

ArcaMax Publishing > Politics > From the Left > Alexander Cockburn

Your email address is safe with us. View our Privacy policy.

Religion:

Enjoy religious news and spiritual inspiration on the religion page

The Funnies:

Get free jokes, comics, and more! See them all on
our funnies page

Author Bio:
Political journalist Alexander Cockburn (pronounced CO-burn) began his career at the University of Oxford, working as a reporter and commentator in...

Read more about Alexander Cockburn.

Books:

Read the classics online or by email. More details on the books page

Games:

Fun online games, quizzes, hangman and more on the games page

Into the Home Straight

Alexander Cockburn

The morning of the third presidential debate, a friend in Landrum, S.C., conducted an informal survey of voter sentiment in this rural town in the heart of Dixie. He pulled over at a convenience store-cum-coffee shop and walked in with a wad of McCain/Palin stickers. "Don't you bring those things in here," said the man behind the register. Our friend strolled around among the regulars sipping their coffee, most of them retired, and could find no takers. "Not one, and these were people who voted 100 percent for Bush in 2004," my friend said. "They're angry."

Why? After a terrible summer of soaring gas prices and plunging stock portfolios, "a lot of them have lost their retirement funds and health savings." Our friend said that at a local nursing home -- an upscale place near Tryon – some residents are telling staff they can't afford to stay. He added that all the talk about Obama's links to terror, to Islam, and to bombers has also had the effect of intimidating elderly Republicans from even putting McCain-Palin signs in their yards.

My friend's experience in Landrum came amid the inglorious tailspin of the disastrous strategy of trying to sink Obama by hanging former Weatherman Bill Ayers round his neck. When Republican consultants like Mary Matalin and Steve Schmidt first pondered this tactic in the late summer, it must have seemed to them like a no-brainer -- a reprise of the way George H.W. Bush finished off Michael Dukakis in 1988. Lee Atwater, Bush's smear-manager, picked up Al Gore's use of Horton -- the black rapist furloughed for a weekend under a law passed by Dukakis -- and retooled it, throwing in slurs about Dukakis being some foreign outsider. So, in the final weeks of Campaign 2008, Barack Hussein Obama would be hit with similar accusations (actually first aired by Hillary Clinton last April) of being an alien radical with intimate ties to a man who had tried to blow up Congress and the Pentagon.

It might have worked but for the fact which apparently escaped the notice of the well-paid consultants running the McCain campaign -- that America was engulfed in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. There was a total disconnect between the financial hurricane hitting America and some archaeology about a '60s radical sitting with Obama on the board of the Woods Fund.

It could have been different. McCain could have gone into the first debate attacking Obama for his support of the bailout. He could have sent Palin round the country denouncing Wall Street greed and predatory bankers, as she did in her debate with Joe Biden. Unlike McCain, Obama and Biden, Palin had no Wall Street cash showing in her campaign war chest, filled only with virtuous mooseburgers.

McCain chickened out, as he always does. He played a feeble role in Washington and voted meekly for the bailout, and thereby threw away the chance to put Obama on the defensive and to allow Palin to taunt Biden for his vote when she faced the paid agent of the credit card companies in St Louis.

Will Obama changed the political landscape? On Sept. 23, he stated on NBC that the crisis and prospect of a huge bailout required bipartisan action and meant he likely would have to delay expansive spending programs outlined during his campaign for the White House. Thus did he surrender power even before he gained it. The next day, he told reporters in Clearwater, Fla., that "issues like bankruptcy reform, which are very important to Democrats, is probably something that we shouldn't try to do in this piece of legislation." In addition, he said that his proposed economic stimulus program "is not necessarily something that we should have in this package." Then he worked the phone, hectoring recalcitrants in the Congressional Black Caucus to vote for the bailout, whose paramount importance was as a show of force as dramatic as 19th century cavalry cutting down demonstrators at Peterloo.

As an instigator of beneficial change, the Clinton administration was over six months after Election Day 1992, when Clinton and turned to Al Gore and said, "You mean my reelection hinges on the Federal Reserve and some f------ bond traders?" Gore nodded, and Clinton promptly abandoned his economic plan to follow the dictates of Wall Street tycoons like Robert Rubin, now a top adviser to Obama. Assuming he wins, Obama beat the speed of Bill Clinton's 1993 collapse by almost seven months.

Copyright 2008 Creators Syndicate Inc.

This news arrived on: 10/17/2008

Share this Story

Digg

del.icio.us

Yahoo

Facebook

Google

Printer Friendly Version | Send this page to a friend | Post Comment

Rate This Story:

Great - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 - Bad

Posted Comments:

11-05-2008 16:02

JCE wrote:

If the American people were all ignorant racists, then McCain would have won but they aren't. This is a democracy, and considering that the states that voted for McCain were mostly the old slave owning states, it is obvious that the republicans just didn't pay any attention to the fact that this is no longer a white anglo saxon protestant country. They were only representing those people. McCain ran a text book case of how not to do a campaign, and people don't want that in the white house. Obama ran a campaign that if he does the same in the white house, we can prosper again as a nation. The republicans helped the rich destroy the middle class and the values of the country. The people have had enough. Stop crying and support your country. Or leave, altho the world is tired of the rich and republican nonsense to and they might not want you. The republicans lost because their democracy is for them and the rich only. Obama won because he believes democracy is for all of us. And all real Americans will support and respect our democracy, our country, and our new president.