We're Gonna Frickin' Lose this Thing

"Stop saying that!" my wife says to me. But this is not a high school football game and I'm not a cheerleader with a bad attitude. This is an election and as things stand now, we're gonna frickin' lose this thing. Obama and McCain at best are even in the polls nationally and in a recent Gallup poll McCain is ahead by four points.

Something is not right. We have a terrific candidate and a terrific VP candidate. We're coming off the worst eight years in our country's history. Six of those eight years the Congress, White House and even the Supreme Court were controlled by the Republicans and the last two years the R's have filibustered like tantrum throwing 4-year-olds, yet we're going to elect a Republican who voted with that leadership 90% of the time and a former sportscaster who wants to teach Adam and Eve as science? That's not odd as a difference of opinion, that's logically and mathematically queer.

It reminds me of playing blackjack (a losers game). You make all the right moves, play the right hands but basically the House always wins. I know what you're going to say " But I won twelve hundred dollars last year in Atlantic City!" Of course there are victories. The odds aren't tilted crazy, but there is a 51%-49% advantage. And in the long run, the house has to win. The house will win.

So what is this house advantage the Republicans have? It's the press. There is no more fourth estate. Wait, hold on...I'm not going down some esoteric path with theories on the deregulation of the media and corporate bias and CNN versus Fox...I mean it: there is no more functioning press in this country. And without a real press the corporate and religious Republicans can lie all they want and get away with it. And that's the 51% advantage.

Think this is some opinion being wryly posited to titillate other bloggers and inspire dialogue with Tucker Carlson or Gore Vidal? Fuck that. Four corporations own all the TV channels. All of them. If they don't get ratings they get canceled or fired. All news is about sex, blame and anger, and fear. Exposing lies about amounts of money taken from lobbyists and votes cast for the agenda of the last eight years does not rate. The end.

So one side can lie and get away with it. Now let's throw in one more advantage. Voter caging and other corruption on the local level with voting. Check out the article here on HuffPost about Ohio messing with 600K voters. If only five thousand of those voters don't or can't vote that's a huge advantage in a contest that could be decided by literally dozens of votes. That takes us to about a 52 to 48% advantage.

I'm not even getting into the fact that the religious right teaches closed mindedness so it's almost impossible to gain new voters from their pool because people who disagree with them are agents of the devil. I just want to look at two inarguable realities: A) we have no more press and B) the Repubs are screwing with the voters on the local level.

I'm telling you, we're going to lose this thing. And afterwords we'll blame ourselves the same way we did with Gore and Kerry (two candidates a thousand times more qualified to lead than W Bush.) Just watch.. McCain wins by a point or two and we all walk around saying things like "Obama was too well spoken." "Biden wasn't lovable enough." "I shouldn't have split those eights." "Why did I hit on 16? Why?!"

So what do we do?

1) We give definitive clear speeches like Biden and Obama gave the other day about how no one talked about any issues at the Republican Convention and how they outright lied. But we do them over and over again. 2) We use the one place where it's still a 50-50 game -- the internet -- as much as we can. 3) But most importantly we should bring up re-regulating the media and who owns it and what that conflict of interest is a lot more. By pretending there's no conflict of interest we're failing to alert the public that they're being lied to or given a looking at a coin at the bottom of a pool slanted truth. Every time a pundit or elected official is on any TV news program it should be a polite formality to mention that GE has made such and such billions off the war in Iraq by selling arms or that Murdoch is a right-wing activist with a clear stake in who wins and who taxes his profits the least. Disney, GE, Viacom, and Murdoch -- all want profits and the candidate and agenda that will get in their way the least.

Obama and Biden should also create a "master sound bite sentence" and repeat it hundreds of times. It should be so true that even the corporations can't screw with it when it makes the airwaves. Here's my attempt: "Katrina, four dollar gas, a trillion dollar war, rising unemployment, deregulated housing market, global warming...no more."

This race should be about whether the Republican Party is going to be dismantled or not after the borderline treason of the past eight years. But instead it is about making the word "community organizer" a dirty word and a beauty queen who shoots foxes from a plane. Someone is not in any way doing their job and it's the press. Or more specifically, that job no longer exists.

Probably the worst offenders are the pundits who take the position that it's all just a game and say phrases like "getting a post-convention bump" or "playing to the soccer Moms." This isn't a game of Monopoly or Survivor. There are real truths that exist outside of the spin they are given and have an effect on lives. 250,000 Iraqi civilians are dead because we let our reality be distorted by the most effective propaganda machine in fifty years, the corporate American press. Money and jobs are flying out of this country as our currency becomes worthless and we're talking about the fact that McCain is a veteran. If someone busted into your house and robbed you would you then forgive them if you found out they were a veteran? Of course not. So why are we forgiving McCain for selling out his country by supporting the Bush agenda?

This is it folks. If McCain takes power we fade and become Australia in the seventies: a backwoods country with occasional flashes of relevance. Except we've got a way bigger military and we're angrier. People will get hurt and we'll pay the bill for the bullets. I'm telling you, unless we wake up, we're gonna lose this frickin' thing.

Comments

[Fishfearme]

How to fight back? I keep getting email from regular friends attempting to be humorous. For example, one offers free tickets to an event where a bulldozer driven by Robbie McNeivel will jump over Obama supporters designed join us all in trashing those Obama elitists. Rather than delete or respond with another tired "LOL", I offered the following:

The kickoff is the first annual Sara Palin stoning of a 14 year old girl who chose to terminate her pregnancy after being raped by her mom's abusive boyfriend.

After which they will release the Obama supporters from the local Starbucks into the pit of un-patriotism for the jump.

The event will close with a voluntary "speaking in tongue's only" prayer about our continued crusade in God's plan for our holy wars preceding the rapture. Interpretation will be subjective because no one really understands why we're there anyway.

Fight back fellas.

[justmeinAz]

here's my attempt at such sentence.

Unnecessary war, legalized torture, government spying on citizens, ailing economy, fewer jobs, broken education, worsening environment, restricted scientific research, and record breaking profits for big oil every new quarter - enough!

It's probably too long, but all the sins of the last 8 years are so bad, it's hard to pick just a couple big ones. They're all huge.

[Jjc2006]

Hmmm....were you this worried when the media was in the bag for Obama and using sexism and right wing talking points from the 90s to trash Senator Clinton?
I am asking because during the primaries the cheerleading here for the network pundits astounded me. I said then, and I will say it now...it's coming back to bite you in the butt. The sleaze and lies that were given 24/7 airtimes by the pundits, things like "The Clintons are racists..." and "Hillary Clinton has secret meetings with the right wing moguls...to destroy the left".....were cheered here on HuffBO....

Now that the media is not doing as the HuffBo and dkos think they should, you are worried.

I am worried too.
I am not a closet republican but will be accused of being one because I was disgusted with the trashing of democrats by this blog, and other left wing blogs. Unlike Arianna and other "suddenly left" blog owners, I have been a dem all my life and my disgust with the left is from the honest assessment that suddenly former republicans and libertarians had more credence with the democratic party than life long liberals like myself.

We have a lot to worry about. The democratic party basically threw people like me under the bus, embraces the libertarians, and former Reagan lovers as the leaders. So yea, we have a problem.

[pbziegler]

This article hits the nail on the head. He only left out one point. There are lots of us, despite the pathetic press, who do get what's going on and where we're headed with more Republican leadership. So its not just the press. Let's face it, Americans have the belief that, just because they went to high school or college, that they are educated. BIG MISTAKE. The ability to think, reason, see behind the hype, analyze, weigh evidence, etc. takes more than sitting in a classroom. About 51% of Americans are just plan stupid and they don't know it. And not knowing it means they aren't open to learning. Do I sound cynical? You bet. History has a way of dealing with situations like this. We're lucky if we turn out as well as Australia in the 60s and 70s if this keeps up.

[nastyvirus]

OK, here's an example of why Democrats will lose in November:

"Adam McKay can CURSE on his blog, but WE CANNOT."

The media rules, the house always wins. Whether you like it or not, Adam, you are part of the media. The media is part of the house. You can do anything you like, but the people are limited.

Great blog, which proves your point exactly.

DEMOCRACY IS DOOMED.

[Volubrjotr]

OBAMA PREDICTED TO LOOSE IN NOVEMBER
BY GALLUP HISTORICAL DATA

July Leader Lost in 6 of Last 9 Competitive U.S.

Presidential Elections



In all other elections since 1948 -- all but one of which involved the successful re-

election of an incumbent -- the eventual winner was leading by at least 16 points at this stage of the campaign,

and retained a wide lead right through the election. On this basis, these six races can be considered

"noncompetitive."

http://www.gallup.com/poll/108676/July-Leader-Lost-Last-Competitive-US-Elections.aspx

[PTAOfficerforObama]

Really He is going to LOOSE?

[NewMexicoForObama]

"Loose"?!?!? I don't care if he's loose. I just don't want him to LOSE.

[ROBOT8]

A JOKE ON HUMANITY

[Guynemer]

The press gives the Republicans a house advantage? Puhlease. SNL has already famously lampooned this nonsense. As if any interviewer ever accused the junior Senator from Illinois of "hubris". The internet is filled with all kinds of debunked nonsense about Palin and much of it has made it too the main stream press. The New York Times (and Whoopie Goldberg) said she was part an Alaskan secessionists group, Soledad O'Brien accused her cutting funding to special needs kids, and the entire MSM feels Charles Gibson nailed her with his Bush Doctrine gotcha moment. All this nonsense is rubbish and yet the press has passed it off as fact. Face it you've got a couple of candidates that do not connect with most Americans, and who'll bankrupt this country.

[c1ee]

Well if McCain wins, then I will lose all hope for America. The country is already on the path of perpetual decline. In 50 years it will be just another power in the world, like France or Germany, but as you said, with a ginormous military and the largest nuclear cache in the world. If McCain is elected by the people, then it is clear what Goethe has said is frighteningly true in America

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."

[Clairvaux]

"But most importantly we should bring up re-regulating the media and who owns it and what that conflict of interest is a lot more."

Without a reinstated Fairness Doctrine, our country is toast. We have to apply what's left of the anti-trust laws to the media at every level.

[ProudLiberalDan]

The fundamental error of the Obama general election campaign was basing it on this naive "new politics", rather than "new policies."

A change in "politics" is a change in style. If that's one's message, then a simply change in personality without changing the policies is all the conservatives need. What Obama should have been doing over the last three months he squandered, other than personally destroying John McCain by using his own gaffes against him and wedge issues that divide the conservative movement, is attacking conservatives for their CONSERVATISM, not their divisiveness.

This is something the naive "new politics" supporters desperately need to hear. There is NO "new politics" majority in this country. People want change. The Obama campaign should have been arguing that conservatism has been the problem (which it has been), and progressivism is the answer. This fundamentally could have been a realigning election about substance, not a superficial election about style over the same conservative policies. The avoidance of ideology has been disastrous.

Conservatives aren't interested in "new politics". They understaned the power of the Presidency and want to win it for themselves to advance their interests.

No candidate, not even Obama, is going to fundamentally change the advesarial and competitive nature of policies.

Obama, please stop talking about four years of the same "politics". Only a tiny percentage of Americans care fundamentally about that and you already have their votes. Please fight their failed ideology and failed policies.

[azyuwish]

Yes, you are so correct that Obama should not focus on "politics" and trying to clean up the way politics is done. People don't care about the political games as much as we would like to think they should. Otherwise Karl Rove would have been ridden out of town on a rail. Everyone knows what he is about and one half of the country LIKES what he is about. These are Nascar people, football people, the game is to WIN.

These same people however, are the ones being hurt by the POLICIES of the Republicans and conservatism, gay marriage and abortion issues aside. Rising unemployment, mortgage industry crisis, sinking home values. "It's the Economy stupid" and more than that, it is the Bush doctrine (yes some voters DO know what that is) which has given us the last 7 years of disasterous foreign policy and a war that has bankrupted us and is the reason we have no money for infrastructure and a low grade Education system. It is the backlash against Science which has given us global warming deniers in top offices. It is the Oil Industry's stranglehold on our energy policy and these are the people who jettisoned the electric car, bought up our cable car and street car networks and junked them so they could force us all into cars needing their gasoline.

[CaptainVideo]

" We use the one place where it's still a 50-50 game -- the internet -- as much as we can."

Yes, but McCain's lead is among older voters who make less or no use of the Internet, so this is not enough. Traditional media has to be extensively used.

[renatam]

Hang in there. Americans by the millions are not reflected in the Polls.

[jazzman]

America is in the grip of it's darkside. It's a side filled with fear, hatred, and anxiety that can't break free of itself. It is a side that cannot take action to right itself. If McCain is elected we will see four more years of this despair reside throughout most of the nation. We will watch as China surpasses us as the econominc kingpin of the world. We will watch as Europe will become the center of science, research, and technology. We will watch as our infrastructure decays, people lose more jobs, more people go bankrupt, our veterans wonder the street. We will see that continued erosion of our middle class and the deterioration of our environment. We will just keep going down hill but with the trend picking up speed. Obama's campaign is a grasp at grabbing for new energy, new hope, and new purpose. The country knows the difference between Obama and the status quo but still almost 50% of our population cannot reach out for it. We all know that the future of this country hangs in the balance and I, honestly, don't know which way it is going to go.

[CaptainVideo]

It looks like the Obama campaign finally gets it.

"MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama's spokesman on Saturday accused Sen. John McCain of "cynically running the sleaziest and least honorable campaign in modern presidential campaign history."

See the following link:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/13/campaign.wrap/index.html

The Obama campaign must make the lying and the sleaze of the McCain campaign a major issue and they seem to finally understand this. Too many people still mistake McCain for the straight talking maveric he has so successfully sold himself as until recently and this misperception must be overturned. The public must be made to see what McCain is, a double-talking, lying, sleazeball who has no moral center and will do anything to get elected.

[zozosmom]

He can't win on that alone. He has to stand FOR something. What DOES Obama stand for?