You Don't Need A Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind Blows

The Washington Bullets basketball team (now the Wizards) won a spectacular national championship in 1978. This was a big deal in Washington, since the town hadn't had a major sports championship since the Redskins won one in 1942. But there were two amusing footnotes to their victory worth mentioning here. The first is that this was the origin of the now-familiar sports phrase: "The opera ain't over 'til the fat lady sings." Although most remember it as being a quote from the Bullets' coach Dick Motta, it was actually said very early on in a qualifying round by a reporter for the rival San Antonio Spurs, Dan Cook. The first time Motta was quoted (after Cook had already said it), it was reported Motta said: "It's not over... It's like an opera. It doesn't end until the fat lady starts singing and that hasn't happened in this one yet." He later reverted to Cook's original (and tighter) phrasing, and it was heard all over the place throughout the rest of the postseason, right up until the Bullets won it all in Game 7 of the finals.

I offer this as a cautionary tale to people who now think Obama's so far out in front in the polls that his only real worry should be what color drapes to use in the Oval Office. The earlier, and simpler, form of the metaphor springs to mind (from the immortal Yogi Berra): "The game isn't over 'til it's over."

But for all this caution, things have certainly been going well for Barack Obama. What remains to be seen is what will happen in the final stretch of the campaign. Because John McCain is not only throwing the kitchen sink (as did Hillary Clinton) at Obama now, but he's also throwing a rusting 1958 Buick chassis that was in the back yard up on cinderblocks. In other words, nobody does mud like Republicans.

Barack Obama isn't taking it lying down, it should be noted. He has struck back by pulling out his ace-in-the-hole -- the Keating Five. Now, every time you hear a "journalist" talk about the Keating Five in the next week or so, bear in mind that their feigned astonishment is so much moose poop. Every single reporter talking about Obama's new Keating Five strategy should really preface their remarks with the following statement:

"Barack Obama has brought up the Keating Five scandal in John McCain's past. For those of you unfamiliar with this scandal, we in the entire mainstream media owe you an apology. Because we have not said a single word about it during the almost two-year-long campaign, even though it is the biggest scandal in the man's past. We really didn't do our job on this one, because we ignored this scandal for as long as we could in the hopes that it wouldn't come up. We should have told you all the details on this scandal a year ago, but we didn't. We failed in our responsibility to vet the candidates, and for that we are profoundly embarrassed and profoundly sorry."

I personally have been practically begging both the media and the Obama campaign -- for months now -- to raise the subject. But I see now that the Obama camp was holding it back to use as a counterattack to the mud they knew was coming. I can't argue with this tactic, or the timing of the deployment. They have shown throughout this campaign a remarkable ability to set the pace that they want during the campaign, and to stick to it and I certainly can't argue with the results this far.

As for whether the efforts of the McCain campaign or the Obama campaign are going to bear fruit, well, that's tough to say at this point. Their could be a backlash against either -- or both -- candidates for going so negative. Or they may tend to cancel each other out. It remains to be seen, and will be hard to separate from reactions to the vice presidential debate and the second presidential debate. As I said, we're in the home stretch now.

McCain's new tactic is to bring up all the stuff Hillary used against Barack Obama, and hope that it sticks now better than it did for her. McCain is teetering on the edge of using Reverend Wright again, but they are definitely using Tony Rezko and Bill Ayers.

Now, Bill Ayers is a juicy target for attacks from the right, since his history in the 1960s was about as radical leftist as you can get. He led the split from the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and, on June 21, 1969 at the SDS annual convention in Chicago, the splinter group left for good after proclaiming themselves the Weathermen. This, from Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" which contains both the lines: "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows;" and (more ominously): "the pump don't work 'cause the vandals took the handle." From the founding of the group, Bill Ayers was an officer in the organization (their leadership group was known as the "Weatherbureau," invoking comparisons to the Soviet "politburo"). When the entire group went underground, on the run from the police, and renamed themselves the Weather Underground, Bill Ayers went with them. He remained underground until 1980, when he turned himself in. Charges against him were subsequently dropped (although other members spent time in jail).

The Weather Underground Organization was labeled a domestic terrorist group by the F.B.I. This was due to the fact that they had set bombs in public buildings (up to and including the Pentagon), and successfully orchestrated the prison break of Timothy Leary. But Ayers, in his book, rejected the label "terrorist," since none of their bombs killed anybody (except an accident in New York City where the only ones killed were the Weathermen making the bombs), and indeed they took precautions to see that they didn't. Ayers wrote:

"Terrorists terrorize, they kill innocent civilians, while we organized and agitated. Terrorists destroy randomly, while our actions bore, we hoped, the precise stamp of a cut diamond. Terrorists intimidate, while we aimed only to educate. No, we're not terrorists."

Whatever you believe about Bill Ayers and the Weathermen, the fact remains that he is not running for president. John McCain is bringing him up because he hopes to smear Barack Obama with guilt-by-association. But this is a highwire act for McCain himself, since he has plenty of associates he really doesn't want to talk about. He's even got an anti-war activist pal in his own past, David Ifshin, who actually visited Hanoi and broadcast anti-American ravings which McCain heard in his own cell in the Hanoi Hilton at the time... but who later became McCain's friend. So this knife cuts both ways.

But John McCain doesn't really have any other arrows left in his quiver. His campaign is approaching all-out desperation mode. They don't want to talk about the economy, so they will try -- in more and more frenetic ways -- to change the subject to anything else in the last few weeks of the campaign.

Whether the Keating Five or Bill Ayers is going to matter to voters is an open question right now, one that won't be answered for at least a week's worth of polling. My opinion is that this sort of thing just isn't going to work this year. The voters aren't interested in viciousness this year, they're interested in answers.

Barack Obama should fire his Keating Five shot, and then pivot back immediately to talking about the economy. Let the press (belatedly) do their job on it. Then get back on the high road. Because right now, that is a path to victory for Obama. His astounding rise in polls during the past two weeks (from McCain up two points, to Obama up by at least six) could be reversed before Election Day. But, for now, it certainly is going in the right direction. The wind is blowing at Obama's back right now. And my guess is that the public doesn't need a Weatherman right now to tell them that.

 

[I promised two pieces of trivia from the Bullets' 1978 victory, but the sharp-eyed reader will notice I only cited one. The second is that this was the first sports championship (due to the recent release of the song) ever to use Queen's "We Are The Champions" after winning. You couldn't turn on a radio for months in D.C. without hearing it after the Bullets won. I'm not prophesizing for Obama here, just wanted to add it as an upbeat footnote.]

 

Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com

 

Comments

[LWkcma]

Kudos to Robert Zimmerman

[dmac]

We have a lot of people here who weren't "there", as they say. (Forgeting the usual line about 'if you can remember the '60's')

Protests, agitation, ROTC buildings being burned, bombs against property...taking over a minesweeper on the Mississippi in the name of North Viet Nam...were political theatre. Ways to draw attention to the cause designed to not cause loss of life, which was (after all), one of the things being protested. If the FBI (in the era of Love It or Leave It, My Country, Right Or Wrong) called them 'terrorists', it was hyperbole. The People were not in fear of the Weathermen, SDS, Black Panthers, there was no concern that they would be bombed or attacked. These were political statements. To the right-wingers: name one attack on a civilian or a civilian site from that era.

McCain is banking on people being unable to think (significant pause) past the word "terrorist". Banking on people hearing that word and looking at it solely through 9/11 eyes. To suggest Ayers is anything like Bin Laden is like being worried you'll be savaged by a gold fish.

On the 'pump' lyrics --- I always thought that meant that if you agitate, The System will stop working. Of course, wasn't it Lennon or McCartney who said you put the words togerther for lots of reasons ('vandal stole the handle' cadence works well, for example) then the listener will tell you what it "means" and the writer will just agree.

[Michale32086]

On March 6, 1970, during preparations for the bombing of an officers' dance at the Fort Dix U.S. Army base and for Butler Library at Columbia University,[20] there was an explosion in a Greenwich Village safe house when the nail bomb being constructed prematurely detonated due to a wiring malfunction. WUO members Diana Oughton, Ted Gold, and Terry Robbins died in the explosion. Cathy Wilkerson and Kathy Boudin escaped unharmed, Boudin running naked from the apartment. It was an accident of history that the site of the Village explosion was the former residence of Merrill Lynch brokerage firm founder Charles Merrill and his son, the poet James Merrill. The younger Merrill subsequently recorded the event in his poem 18 West 11th Street, the title being the address of the house. An FBI report later stated that the group had possessed sufficient amounts of explosive to "level ... both sides of the street".[21]

The bomb preparations have been pointed out by critics of the claim that the Weatherman group did not try to take lives with its bombings. Harvey Klehr, the Andrew W. Mellon professor of politics and history at Emory University in Atlanta, said in 2003, "The only reason they were not guilty of mass murder is mere incompetence. I don't know what sort of defense that is."

Why be making a "nail bomb" if your only going to damage property???

Michale.....

[dmac]

If your Wiki answer deserves comment:

Was the townhouse incident at the turning point from theatre (Weathermen did call an hour in advance of bombs to give time for people to be cleared; property associated with certain government actions were the targets) to revolution? Did Oughton suspect this, find she couldn't support it, and self-sacrifice? Or would this bomb follow the same format as the previous? Don't think anyone, least of all you, knows.

Why call an hour in advance if you want to kill people?

It's always nice to take A Walk Down Memory Lane, but what, in heaven's name, does any of this have to do with The Economy, Iraq, or Health Care?

[BCubedReg]

You know Michale, I have never agreed with you on anything but wow.. miracles do happen. I agree...

"Why be making a "nail bomb" if your only going to damage property???"

However, That doesn't make Obama a terrorist because he knows Ayers.

By right wind logic, mere association with a terrorist makes them a terrorist. By the same logic if Bush knows the Bin ladin family (and he does), does that make GWB a terrorist? NO! and neither does it for Obama

[PioneerKing]

McCain has hatred, fear and racism left

The republicans will get in the sewer and start to fling crap with a venom that has rarely been seen front and center in this country since the days of desegregation.

The fear is going to be heightened to a level you have never seen.

The GOP bigots will have fliers, ads, radio commercials, inter-net spam and video about blacks stealing your jobs, and in these tough times how blacks and other minorities are stealing your children"s places in college. It's going to be worse than ugly.

Watch for the Bush/Cheney republicans and folks at Homeland Security will claim that we are under some sort of terrorist attack and, will also release Bin Laden tapes and al Quaeda threats and claim that they have captured a terrorist cell and the members will be black men.

The GOP will claim that Sen. Obama has terrorists who have contributed to his campaign all while our financial system burns.

McCain and the republican party have once again proven that they are the party of hatred, fear, and divisiveness.

Sen. Obama's campaign was doing much to help bridge the racial divide nonetheless McCain and the republican party has signaled that they wish our nation to remain divided and for Americans to never see beyond color if it means winning an election.

[Michale32086]

Ya know, political bigotry is just as insidious, hateful and perverse as racial bigotry..

Think about it..

Michale.....

[dmac]

Ooooo, do tell!

Check out the Wiki, again, and see if you can come up with examples of people being denied jobs or the chance to purchase a house (including 'in some neighborhoods) becausee of their political leanings.

Ever seen a Mixed Party couple stared at in public?

Any guys in white sheets shown up to lynch a Right Winger or a Left Winger?

"just as insidious, hateful, and perverse" ???? You're not overburdened with an excess of thought processes, are you?

[jakejj]

Why don't the Dems bring up the McCain/Ifshin connection? Why don't more people know about? Ifshim did the very same thing Jane Fonda did and you know how the righties feel about her? All Obama has to do is mention this once and the whole Ayers thing is going away.

[SENATORCALLENBOWE]

WE KNOW :) THE CLASS OF THE NEW GENERATION ALREADY PREDICTED WERE AWESOME :)

[BarackMarley]

Good story on the Weathermen. They never intended to kill anyone and just meant to cause property damage. Until last night on Olbermann, the media hasn;t brought up Palin's involvement with the radical Alaskan secessionist group AKIP.

Here's evidence of Palin's membership and an interview with its chairman, Lynette Clark.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/07/olbermann-highlights-pali_n_132550.html#postComment

[Michale32086]

}}}}}}}They never intended to kill anyone

So that makes their terrorism OK????

Please tell me that is not what you mean...

Michale.....

[JScott]

People and TROLLS stop obsessing over who allegedly associated with who, if you look at ANYONE YOU ever associated with you can do the 6 degrees game and find someone of a disreputable character.
GET OVER IT---
Let' remember that TOM HAYDEN a 60's radical also served in the California legislature honorably serving his district, he as since retired, the state hasn't become communist and radical (tho some may think so-it's the most populous state and has the biggest state economy and all the bennies and probs associated with that). You can bet that in the future even 60 antiwar radicals will be running for office-hey they are working 'within' the system-isn't that what they were told to do?

[Michale32086]

I did a search on Hayden and I did not see any mention of him blowing up buildings or being involved in the death of people.

Comparing Hayden with Ayers is a non-issue..

These are the facts...

Obama, on several occasions chose to associate and socialize with a terrorist. Did Obama knowingly do this???

That is the question that Obama needs to answer..

}}}}}}}}}}GET OVER IT---

Change "Ayers" to "Bin Laden"...

Is your "GET OVER IT" response the same?

I wouldn't think so..

Michale.....

[huffandpuffagain]

Here's the problem with calling Ayers a terrorist - he's not in the same league as Osama bin Laden. He's not even in the same league of terror as Timothy McVeigh - who was right wing, not left wing. Just to be cold about it - there is no memorial to the innocent victims of Ayers, because there ARE NO innocent victims (as with McVeigh and Bin Laden).

[HCY727]

We better start to worry that the Republicans can start to thread the needle from Barrack from Ayers to Acorn to Fannie and Freddie to our frends in Congress in relationship to bundling the sub-primes and selling them to wall street. This can get really bad for us.

[Michale32086]

That is also a legitimate concern.

The connection between Democrats and the bad economy is obvious to anyone who can put two and two together..

Even Clinton was quoted as saying that the Democrats were the problem..

Michale.....

[wilray]

Six degrees of Separation is so right.

Forget Bill Ayers and The Weathemen; Obama has a much more troubling association. Dick Cheney is his cousin. And you can't get more terrorist than Bush/Cheny.

Over 4,100 dead. Over 30,000 wounded, including many with severe brain trauma. Of course this is just counting the U. S. confirmed dead.

The Iraqi body count is estimated to be over 1,270,000. -- all for a senseless stupid war. Bin Laden was not in Iraq. There were no WMD's. And that nonsense about exporting democracy -- how do we do that? No doubt, Saddam Hussein was a bad, bad man, but we killed 1, 270, 000 Iraqi citizens. Iraqi citizens fled their own country to get away from the holocaust. We also destabilized the region. Iran and Iraq were foes who kept each other in check. Weakening Iraq means we now must deal with a stronger Iran.

We also weakened our own country in the process. The financial crisis we find ourselves mired in is due in part to the cost of the Iraq War. John McCain keeps saying he was right about the surge. WTF, he voted for the war.

[Michale32086]

The Keating 5 issue is a non-starter and will end up hurting Democrats more than it will McCain.

The fact that McCain was absolved of any wrong doing and that 3 Democrats were convicted is the fact that will stick in voter's minds..

Democrats bring up scandals at their own peril because, invariably, Democrats are MORE guilty of scandals than Republicans.

Michale.....

[Michale32086]

}}}}}}}}}}}}
But Ayers, in his book, rejected the label "terrorist," since none of their bombs killed anybody (except an accident in New York City where the only ones killed were the Weathermen making the bombs), and indeed they took precautions to see that they didn't.
{{{{{{{{{{{

Sorry.. A terrorist is a terrorist is a terrorist..

"Terrorism is defined as ongoing and systematic attacks of violence specifically targeted against innocent civilian persons or property for the purpose of furthering a political, economical or ideological agenda."

Ayers IS a terrorist.

You don't think people were terrorized when bombs were going off all the time??

You think people knew (or cared) that Ayers and his fellow terrorists were allegedly going to great lengths to insure no one would be hurt or killed??

William Ayers is a terrorist. He will always be a terrorist.

It's really that simple...

As to the Obama connection, what I want to know is, did Obama know that Ayers was a terrorist when he accepted the invitations to associate with Ayers?

That is the question that Obama keeps dodging.

And, until Obama fully and completely answers that question, this issue will do him some damage..

Michale.....

Crossposted to www.chrisweigant.com

[Pulemerci]

The Weatherman were a rdical leftist group. They carried out a campaign consisting of bombings, jailbreaks, and riots. Their attacks were mostly bombings of government buildings, along with several banks, police department headquarters and precincts, state and federal courthouses, and state prison administrative offices. The founder, William Ayers, now a college professor, worked with Obama on several projects and hosted a party at his home that launched Obama's political career. What concerns me, aside from Obama's connections to a terrorist, is that fact that Ayers is teaching at a university. I know most universities are way over to the Left, but to hire a terrorist and an unrepentant one at that? He makes Ward Churchill look like a patriotic American and scholar.

[IndyReader]

The writer said O should "fire his Keating Five shot, and then pivot back immediately to talking about the economy" which is exactly what he did, creating the Keating Five site and letting the 13 minute video go viral. That way people can see it and make up their own minds while O gets back to what's really important. Once again he's taken a smarter step that McC & Co.

[S1m0n]

When you say "media", you mean the news media, right?

So tell me what's news about Keating?

[grata2ude]

Great article. Every MSM that covered Obama bringing up Keating Five said the same thing. " this happened what, 15 or so years ago? What is he bring this up for? It has no bearing, McCain was admonished but thats all that came of it. " That was on MSNBC, and CNN. Yet they didn't seem to think that Ayers being in the Weatherman when Obama was 8 wasn't irrelavent.

MSM is bought by conservatives. I don't care what channel you watch.

[Chris Weigant - Huffpost Blogger]

grata2ude -

NBC was just as bad. CBS did a little bit better job with it. Let's see how it plays in the next few days...

-CW

[lemonyashes]

Just as I don't believe McCain is the same POW of 40 years ago, why should what Ayers did then matter? Is Ayers the same man now? I doubt it. I'm not the infant I once was, nor am I the teenager I once was, nor am I the young adult I once was, etcc...But I think McCain would have us believe he is the same POW he once was as he would have us believe Ayers is. Ayers sounds like he is a contributing member of society and is doing good works, what is the problem? Calling Ayers a terrorist in these instances is also frightening as it seems to be used to incite violence. So will Obama live to see election day if the Republicans work their base into a fearmongering frenzy appealing to their reptilian brains.

[Pulemerci]

CBS is irrelavent since Dan's rather embarrassing forged memo episode.

[McFlipFlop]

A great piece of writing!

Thanks so much. I agree with every word.

[RobinLandseadel]

I've had a dream for many years of a Billie Holiday version of "Subterranean Homesick Blues"---perhaps Madeleine Peyroux could channel her once more for a downtempo version of this classic. And I hope that Heart will reclaim "Barracuda" with a suitably vicious variation of that pop standard pointed in the direction of the lipsticked one.