Why We Fight, 2008: Against the War, Against a Culture of Fear, And For Barack Obama

As we stagger out into the middle of the ring for Round 1,293 of this heavyweight title-fight between two battered contenders for the Democratic Party crown, the cumulative effect of all the punches, head-butts and knockdowns has been to make us all feel soul-weary and half-concussed. As one who's become an Obama supporter, I've even found myself, in recent days, half-ready to toss in the proverbial towel --just give it to her already, we all know Don King appointed the judges, they'll award her the "decision" on points anyhow...As if I'm steeling to prepare myself for another corrupt, home-town decision, delivered by bought-and-paid-for judges.

But when that weariness beckons, I know it's more important than ever to remind myself why it's worth fighting on, no matter what. So here's an off-the-top-of-my-head list of reasons -- a kind of Why We Fight, circa 2008 -- that keeps me, and hopefully others, from saying "no mas" and abandoning the struggle:

--Because while hatred is a cancer, gnawing the hater from within, a righteous indignation is aerobics for the soul; and, between the two-bit cartoon-figures posing as political experts on TV, who've made this campaign feel like an endless re-run of Are You Smarter Than A Third-Grader (Tim Russert, Wolf Blitzer, et al), and the Clinton operatives who ceaselessly exploit those cartoon-figures (Mark Penn, Howard Wolfson, Sidney Blumenthal, etc.)--and those with a poseur's foot in both camps (like James Carville and George Stephanopolous)--we have much to be righteously indignant about.

--Because we know that all the candidates need to think deeper, harder, and more compassionately about ending the criminal occupation of Iraq -- visiting that country's hospitals to see the damage first-hand, apologizing to our victims, and working to make reparations for the horrors we have visited on the innocent men, women, and children there -- and we sense, from everything we've seen, that Obama is more likely to show that kind of honest compassion than any other candidate.

--Because we are women, old and young, who feel that if Hillary Clinton's casual threats of genocide represent a victory for feminism, then where do we go to un-burn our bras?

--Because in the same week that Clinton made that genocide threat -- perpetuating a George Bush style that is not "cowboy" at all, with that word's overtones of tough-ass heroism, but instead the epitome of prissy, fey cowardice -- Obama openly considered the possibility of the war-crimes trials for torture that are already overdue.

--Because we know the Clintons extremely well (Bill Richardson, Ted Kennedy, Cris Dodd, Joe Andrew, Robert Reich, etc.); and, rather than earning our loyalty -- which is historically almost always the case in American party politics -- amazingly enough they have earned our distrust and suspicion instead, and we have reached out to a new candidate with no favors to promise us except a chance at a fresh start...

...Or because all we know of the Clintons nowadays is what we see on TV, and between Bill's shameless and amateurish bullyboy tactics, and Hillary's profound depths of blatant insincerity, we feel an overwhelming need to finally switch channels.

--Because anyone supported by Rush Limbaugh, the openly fascist Richard Mellon-Scaife, and Everybody's Favorite Ol' Crypto-Nazi, Pat Buchanan, is probably not earning that support by pushing for progressive social change.

--Because we know that it will take at least a generation to undo the damage to America's image around the world that George Bushes I and II have created; and we know that Clinton -- not only with her Strangelove-ian threat to obliterate an entire country, but also with her prim, smug promise to continue the curious Bush policy of refusing to even meet with foreign leaders unless she decides they're nice enough guys -- has shown she's not the person to best represent our country abroad. We'd be happier with someone whose background -- as a multi-racial child, growing up in a variety of places and circumstances -- and whose vocation as a civil-rights organizer has uniquely equipped him to represent a truly diverse America.

--Because we can judge a future president's government by the company they keep in their campaign, and we know that The Porcine Mark Penn is still puppet-mastering Clinton's strategy with one sweaty paw while eagerly pocketing blood-stained Blackwater dollars with the other...and that The Human Praying Mantis, James Carville, has nothing more left in his once-scary arsenal than laughable Judas-cries, darkly veiled threats, and bizarre testimony to the size of the ex-First Lady's "cojones."

--Because we reject the worn-out politics of fear that Clinton has so passionately embraced, starting way back when with surrogate Bob Kerrey's "Obama-is-Muslim" slurs, continuing with the dissemination of the ludicrous "Arab garb" photos and the 60 Minutes "as far as I know" vaudeville routine, through The Porcine One's racist depiction of Obama as some kind of streetcorner coke-dealer, and the 3AM phone-call campaign, ad infinitum, ad nauseum...Because, frankly, the Clinton campaign has left a toxic slime-trail of fear across white America...and, as Carlos Santana just told a cheering audience at the New Orleans Jazz Festival: "We've had enough war and fear...we don't want it any more. We just...don't...want it any more."

--Because, like Bruce Springsteen, we come from dying Rust-Belt cities (Utica, New York, in my case) with our eyes wide open, and we know exactly what Bill Clinton did to us with NAFTA and GATT, and what he's still doing to earn the tens of millions that he and Hillary are banking from the union-busting billionaires in Colombia -- and no amount of horseshit shot-and-a-beer photo-ops will convince us the Clintons are on the side of the laboring man and woman.

--Because we're sick to death of blatant pandering, whether it's with laughably cynical Gas-Tax Holidays (whoopie!) or 24/7 pastor-demonizing (boo!) -- and we prefer Obama's nuanced, adult, one-to-one way of speaking to the outmoded, Huey-Long-without-the-talent campaign style of Clinton and McCain.

--Because it takes a certain kind of person to vote to authorize a criminal and transparently-phony Shock-and-Awe attack on the women and children of a foreign country and never apologize for that vote, even when the con-men and two-bit thugs who fronted it have been forced to admit the whole thing was a charade; and, ladies and gentlemen, Hillary Clinton is that kind of person.

--Because Obama has shown gentlemanly class in refusing to work the "sniper-fire" lie into every TV sound-bite -- a kind of class unknown to Clinton, who pimped out the Reverend Wright "issue" until everyone finally cried "enough" except for the insatiable Tim Russert and her own too-cute-by-half operative at ABC, LIttle Georgie Stephanopolous.

--Because we know that smart, principled people, whom we love and respect, still believe deeply in Clinton, even if we can't always understand why...But we also know that politicians work to increase their appeal to all their "target-groups"; and when one of Clinton's biggest target-groups is now, as the TV commentators are so delicately putting it, "The Low-Information Voter" -- i.e., the willfully-ignorant, which is the only real definition of "stupid" -- Penn, Wolfson, and Co. will work tirelessly to increase the amount of stupid-friendly stuff in her campaign...

--Because Clinton started out with a virtually insurmountable head-start, in every way, and it took a genuine, heartfelt, and unprecedented grass-roots movement--spearheaded by newly-energized young men and women, black and white--to wrest the invisible tiara from her head, and while we know she ain't givin' it up without a fight, we know what it would mean for a whole new generation if their hopes were to be thwarted by some kind of last-minute, nationwide gerry-mandering, or Brand New Metrics, or the don't-count-little-states, change-the-primary-rules-after-the-primaries-are-over tactics that the Clinton campaign is trying to sneak into the Democratic Party process.

----Because -- and maybe most importantly of all -- in a week when newly-discovered photos of Hiroshima reminded us of the nightmarish horror that nuclear "obliteration" can wreak on innocent human flesh, Hillary Clinton defended, without shame, her threat to commit similar genocide on women and children.

I could go on, of course. I'm not a pundit, don't even play one on TV; I'm just speaking from the heart. And -- believe it or not, Clinton supporters -- I would eagerly read a similar piece on behalf of Clinton, and work to absorb it with an open mind, if it came from a similar place: one that advocates for justice and peace, against fearmongering and ignorance. Perhaps there's still time for Clinton to refashion her approach so that it feels like those are her driving forces.

But until that day...we have only just begun to fight.

--For Wesley Stromberg

Comments

[Dunnage]

Talk about a lightweight.

[cincyr]

I too have been feeling like I should just give up because the bad guys always seem to win. Just like Donald Trump who always chooses the "Apprentice" with the best killer instincts, it seems inevitable that Hillary will win. If she does, perhaps it's just a sign that we're not really ready for change; we still want an in your face, no holds barred person running the country. Except this time it will be a cowgirl instead of a cowboy.

Thanks for encouraging me to keep up the fight. Good guys can finish first!

[KillTheMessenger]

You might have noticed that Donald Trump never gives his apprentices anything important to do. It looks important on tv but when you know a little bit about the business he is in, it is obvious that this is all show. The only important person in that place is D.T..

We are not ready for change, yet. This nation has to sink a lot deeper before real learning will set in. That was clear before this election cycle started. Senator Obama knows that. He is running on hope and so is his campaign that there might just be enough people to get started. It's close. We will see. At this point in time I don't think so. Voters and super-delegates have to prove me wrong.

[suigeneris]

Um, how does it "seem inevitable" that Hillary is going to win, when she's behind by every metric and has no mathematically possible way open to her to get the nomination?

The only -- and let me emphasize ONLY -- way that Hillary is going to win is if Obama supporters start saying stuff like that, and giving up, because the superdelegates will get the impression that she's no longer as completely unelectable as she actually is.

All Obama has to do is keep on trucking, and the nomination is in the bag for him. Clinton would have to win each remaining state by more than 65% to take this away. There is nothing -- NOTHING -- to be afraid of except fear itself, as the saying goes.

[cincyr]

From MSNBC First Read:

Tom Daschle, an Obama supporter, said today that undecided superdelegates would be more than "ticked" if the Clinton campaign tries to force the so-called "nuclear option" and encourages the Rules and Bylaws committee, which meets May 31st, to seat the Florida and Michigan delegates.

The former South Dakota senator said he was amazed at the number of undecided superdelegates that have called him in the last 24 hours saying that it would be an "absolute disaster."

Asked if the superdelegates would be "ticked" if the nuclear option were implemented he replied, "If we overturn what has happened in all these elections all over the country and do something like that, ticked is mild compared to the feeling I am getting from reports all over the country today."

[BassMent]

Beautifully written, Mr. Eskow... thank you.

For over seven years we have been forced to witness the fallout from the dumbing down of American political dialog. BushCo under the direction of Karl Rove mastered the art of appealing to lowest common denominators in the lowliest Americans. And Senator Clinton has taken up this tactic, employing fear, racism, and xenophobia mixed with a "Guns, God and Guts" rhetorical plea to the basest of our nation's base instincts.

George W Bush's campaign famously made a case about the need to have "adults in the white house."

Well, now we've seen what happens when those adults are either utterly deceitful or willfully ignorant.

This time, we need to have smart people in the white house. Bring on the elites, and let's finally get some worthwhile things done around here.

[CeciliaBertrand]

Wonderfully written - as if you read my mind,,,GREAT!!!!

[mamak]

"All that needs to be done for evil to prevail is that good men do nothing"... your article says it all.....

To the good few, ...and the likes of you
Thanks!

[Gma11]

Thank you for articulating what so very many of us feel.

[HeevenSteven]

Oops! "You and your" I'm not smart enough to edit a single sentence.

[HeevenSteven]

You're and you're bro' are both smarter than the pundits John, and you're far freer to speak the truth.

[heather11483]

*applauds*

Lovely piece, especially the statement of understanding at the end because we've all got to come together in the fall.

Catch a little hope, everybody. Obama '08.

[NorVaGal]

Mr. Eskow: Thanks for re-energizing all of our batteries with your thoughtful post. America is too precious to abandon due to discouragement and disgust at unethical practices. It is so true... "Divided We Fail."

[kikiva]

When is the Huff Post going to stop demonizing Clinton and attack the 'real' enemy, the Republican party?

Sigh, I guess never until they destroy the Democratic party in the process. And they are doing a great job of alienating Clinton supporters, who they will need to win in the fall if Obama is the nominee.
But keep on doing it, you are doing McCain the greatest favor he could ask for.

Many Clinton supporters will stay home in the fall, vote for 3rd party or for McCain because they are tired of the Huff Post demonizing of Hillary Clinton. So you see, you really aren't doing Obama any favors by columns like this - not just you, all the other Huff Post columnists.

[4wehttam]

You know what, if Obama loses to McWar because Clintonites decide to play revenge in the fall, then all I can say is at least the rest of us stood for what was right. We stood for peace, tolerance, understanding and AUTHENTICITY like we've never seen before. I'm proud to be a supporter of someone who doesn't lie to us, someone whose willing to see things from a different lens and not do what's politically expedient.

If voting for McWar makes you feel secure and you feel it's the right thing to do, then by all means do so. We will do everything in our power to get him elected, but we will not lower ourselves by kissing Clintonites asses to persuade you to vote for him.

[BishkekBuddy]

When are YOU going to actually read every single word the man wrote? Instead of this kind of a reply to the man, why don't you write him a similar article on why he should support Hillary instead? He did say, at the end of it, that he would read it with an open mind. And I, too, would like to read it.
You see, threats don't work. Stay at home in November, if that's what you want to do. "Punishing" the Obama supporters by staying at home is a fairly sad position - and if he does lose, you'll have no one to blame but yourself for 4 more years of Bush.

[Jamchinadian]

That's a jaw-dropping question if ever there was one !!!

The question you should ask is, "When will Clinton stop JOINING the Republicans in demonizing Obama" ?

[grendl]

When are Clinton supporters going to stop exagerating McCain's appeal, he's not going to win.

And Clinton supporters can sit home and nurse their wounded egos November 4th. Barack will still have the numbers to beat him. McCain doesn't energize the electorate.

First you mocked Barack for his message of hope. Then you feigned horror at his realistic and irrefutable observations about bitterness in this country's disappearing small towns. You dangled his visage like a black rubber spider before the eyes of a nation, much of which already harboured reservations regarding a black presidential candidate. Woke soccer moms up with 3:00 a.m. phones calls, only to tell them all was safe and good ( as long as Hillary's in the White House )

You insinuated, slandered, outright calling him a Muslim. ( a non denial confirmation if ever there was one ) And your candidate endorsed a GOP member above one of our own.

When are you going to stop pretending Hillary's run a clean campaign.

[RobertArend]

"When is the Huff Post going to stop demonizing Clinton and attack the 'real' enemy, the Republican party? "

Let me ask you, when will Hillary Clinton stop demonizing Barack Obama and attack the 'real' enemy, the Republican party?

[standforpeace]

What a lovely post. Thanks for spelling out so clearly why so many of us have embraced Obama. I too would love to see somone writing something similiar about Hillary because I feel like maybe I missed something. But what I hear from her supporters instead is that "she is a fighter with testicular fortitude." And what that means is that Hillary will keep going with the hope that something happens to make the guy that has the majority of pledged delegates and popular vote unelectable. Unfortunately, what that question of electabilty has come down to is whether or not whites will vote for the Black guy. Hillary is banking on the fact that whites are every bit as racist as she hopes they are and that she can convince the Super Delegates of that. From where I stand, that kind of "fight and testicular fortitude" reminds me of Southern segregationists who held on to the last minute spewing hate left and right and fighting like hell to stop the change that was coming.

I am hopeful that Americans will stop and ask themselves some questions. If it's true that Hillary is a fighter, what beyond her own personal ambition is she fighting for? And what results from her willingness to continue a fight that has lareday been lost?

[cryingmoon]

I, too, have thought.....Let her have it!.....So Weary!.....wondering if this is not some suppressed "Hillary hate"? I am in her "demographic", though educationally "elite"....60-something white female. Thoughts of Hillary "grates", incites disbelief, annoys, disappoints, p***** me off!!!! with her way of insulting and exploiting. Were she my President, I would never in my adult life look forward to a "state-of-the Union" address. What might that state of union be? Lucky to get "more of the same" instead of worse?

I am retired, live alone, .....political "junky-like" existence. I live the issues....through 4 adult children, 11 grandchildren to whom "we" are handing a country that I love, but no longer recognize. Torture is "debatable"?...don't start!

Your piece brought tears to my eyes. Not because I am an emotional wreck.....but because we have "hope" within our grasp. We might let it slip away. I might have been in my home state of North Carolina this weekend and had a chance to tell the Obamas that "I know". I would tell Michelle that I, too, am REALLY proud of my country for the first time in "forever". To Senator Obama....if you do not win....now and in November....you might have to rely on this thought...."forgive them, for they know not what they do". (Stop! I am NOT insinuating that Senator Obama is the Messiah! The quote seemed to fit the situation.....after all, "we" put GWB in office TWICE!)

[JohnEskow]

Thank you for writing this. It's an honor to receive comments like yours, and similar ones.

John Eskow

[BeingFrank]

I was also naive about Clinton and the nature and impact of gender with regards to a leader.

I now realize that it's the soul that reveals all, and Clinton's is as jagged & crude as the most hard core street brawling gang leader, who's arsenal is brass knuckles a broken beer bottle, counterfeit dollars and as reserve, a snub nose 38.

Standing opposite her is a thoughtful, intelligent, concerned Obama with his raw truth and big heart, who is reaching out his hand to those who are struggling to see past the false image that Clinton has painted of him, hoping to lift them out of their bleak existence, fear and hatred of a phantom that hides behind a mask of mirrors.

Once Obama can make it out of the bar floor with the flying stools, bottles and switch blades, to the stage, then he will be able to quiet the crowd long enough to make his vision clear,¦ It"s only a matter of time..

[daddigrace]

Roseanne Barr only plays a suburban Indiana housewife on TV, and not in real life. Yet it's been a good while since I've heard any of her nonsense about Obama, hasn't it. I wonder why she's keeping so hush-hush now?

[Charmed]

Excellent article. I'm still fighting for Obama and everyday I wonder how anyone could support a liar like hillary. It just doesn't make any sense.

[YY2H8]

Thank you, John. Strength and stamina are what we need now.

As Clinton's antics become more bizarre and obscene it is hard to fathom how they could work on even the most "willfully ignorant".

Unless we want our country and our principles to degenerate to the point that it will make 2008 look like the good old days, we have to keep fighting on. Yes, we must.

[grendl]

The Clintons have tasted absolute power, become infected with it, and now seek to feed their addictive need for it once again.

Sure being Senator of New York is a glitzy job, earning millions of dollars for book promotions and speaking engagements is great, but it's just not the international spotlight they once held. It must be a great feeling, being at the top rung of the ladder .

I don't blame either one of them frankly for wanting to get back. And I honestly think they both, deep deep down are good people, who believe they've done right by their party and country, as that was a pretty decent eight year run of peace and prosperity. But while we rested between wars, our detractors were able to congeal, and form a plan for our demise, both economically, and in terms of national security.

We fell asleep at the wheel, allowing Bin Laden to grow to prominence. We allowed the right to take the moral highground with Oval Office exploits. We willingly watched our jobs farmed overseas, and Wal Mart put small town America out of business, and now everyone wants to pay as little as possible for as much as possible, bringing wages down as profit margins disappear.

How is the couple who help facillitate that going to fix it exactly? And was the price to pay for all that peace and prosperity too high ultimately?

Elias '08

[Marlyn]

"even when the con-men and two-bit thugs who fronted it have been forced to admit the whole thing was a charade" ???

Dick Cheney never did admit that there were no WMDs in Iraq. Now he says the WMDs were moved to Syria.

Who still believes this man? NOT THIS TIME!

[UKThom]

Brilliant. Simply Brilliant.

I was a Hillary supporter. I wanted the kind of change she opened up her campaign with. I wanted to go back to the days before the current debacle in the Middle East, and I wanted her to take me there.

Clearly, she can't (or won't), for various reasons.

I think Obama has that ability. I really do. I just don't want him to be ridden out on a rail because of some insignificant matter cooked up by his opponents and fed to me bit by ever-present bit on the television, on-line, and across the newspapers. I fear that might be the case.

It's all a bit nerve-wracking.

(from an Ex-Pat in the UK)