Subject: A Vote For Obama Is A Vote For McCain

A Vote For Obama Is A Vote For McCain

By Jerry D. Rose
27 September, 2008
Countercurrents.org
http://www.countercurrents.org/rose270908.htm

As we get ever closer to the November election, more and more of my friends who
are Obama supporters are upbraiding me for my support of Cynthia McKinney, on
their belief that a vote for her is a "vote for McCain." Many of them agree that
she or some other third party candidate is a better choice than either McCain or
Obama for President but has no chance of winning, is not a "viable" candidate,
and that I should support Obama as the decidedly "lesser evil" alternative to
McCain.

The purpose of this article is to set this argument on its head and argue that,
in fact, Barack Obama is not "viable," and that casting one's vote for him
denies third party candidates of any opportunity to defeat the GOP ticket. For
purposes of this argument, I am willing to waive a very substantial doubt that
Obama is indeed highly preferable to McCain as President. Whether Obama or
McCain is elected, we will have no interruption in the bipartisan agenda of
American imperialism with its wars and occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan and
perhaps Pakistan and Iran and who-knows-where; we will have no single payer
health insurance; we will see no diminishment of class and racial inequality in
the country. In the argument of last resort for an Obama presidency, that he not
McCain would be nominating Justices for the next Supreme Court vacancies, a
Democratic majority in the Senate could avert such a travesty with a McCain
presidency as the appointment of
Justices who would complete the process of dismantling Roe v. Wade.

But that's not my argument, really. Let's say hypothetically that, like McKinney
or Nader, Obama would be a MUCH better President from a progressive perspective.
But no matter, the same argument as that against third party candidates because
of their lack viability can, in my opinion, be applied to the candidacy of
Barack Obama.

Why would I argue that Barack Obama is not "electable" as President? A variety
of considerations lead to this conclusion. Perhaps the smallest of these is the
reluctance of principled progressives---pp's if you will--- (as I consider
myself to be, along with most writers and commentators on Counter Currents) to
support a candidate like Obama with such vacillating or missing positions on key
progressive issues as he pursues a "centrist" campaign along with the Democratic
Leadership Council. We pp's may like to think of ourselves as the wielders of
substantial political power, but the proof of that in the electoral pudding of
votes for progressive national candidates is seldom to be seen.

A more important consideration is the downright racism in much of the American
electorate; and by racism I mean anti-Muslim as well as anti-black sentiment.
Many "liberal" white Americans---a key Obama constituency---like to pride
themselves on their lack of racial prejudice by virtue of support for a "black"
candidate; albeit one who banishes frightening "extremists" like Jeremiah Wright
from the charmed circle of his associates. But for every such white who is
comfortable with a "safe" African American like Obama, there is probably another
who is ready to invoke the "black is a black" prejudice of lumping all blacks
into an undifferentiated category of "dangerous" persons. Progressives may take
the gross over-representation of blacks in America's prisons and on its welfare
rolls and its victims of mortgage foreclosure as indications of racial
discrimination, but these facts simply confirm for racist whites that blacks are
indeed dangerous and
irresponsible people, certainly not the "kind" whom you want to have in the
presidency.

There is, then, the sleeper "issue" in this campaign of anti-Muslim prejudice
among Americans of all races, and the way it will operate against Obama in the
election. While the "Obama is a Muslim" claim has been exposed for the lie it
is, the very fact that it would even be considered a "smear" against a candidate
is indicative of the broad anti-Muslim prejudice in the American electorate;
Obama's very marginal family Muslim connections and his middle name may turn out
to have more impact on his electoral chances than most of his other liabilities
discussed in this article. Obama himself seemed to realize the toxic effect of
this factor as he moved to remove Muslim Americans from positions of visibility
in his campaign events. His pandering to AIPAC and his ludicrous gaffe of
proclaiming a "unified" Jerusalem to Israel's benefit may also have been his
efforts to disassociate himself from any shreds of taint of Muslim sympathies.
These efforts may be no
more successful with the racist yahoo-dom in the American electorate than than
his efforts to counter anti-black feeling by throwing "extremists" like Jeremiah
Wright under the bus. (The current project of the Zionist Clarion Fund of
putting free copies of the anti-Islam propaganda film "Obsession" in people's
newspapers http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erik-ose/
pro-mccain-group-dumping_b_125969.html in "swing" states may turn out to be a
brilliantly executed "dirty trick" of the GOP campaign.)

Beyond Obama's vulnerability to anti-black and anti-Muslim sentiments in the
American electorate, he is vulnerable as well because of some characteristics of
his personal political biography: the kind of "skeleton in the closet" that has
been known to derail numerous other American political careers. I refer to his
past political connections in Illinois politics and the nature of his current
campaign financiers, matters that the Republican "swift boat" crews are sure to
exploit as the campaign proceeds. Ever since Evelyn Pringle's series of articles
http://www.opednews.com/author/author58.html earlier this year detailing the
questionable (at best) association of Obama with a corrupt political machine in
Illinois that has already netted jail terms for a former Governor and for an
Obama fund-raiser, Tony Rezko, the susceptibility of Obama being drawn into this
scandal has stood like the "donkey in the room," ignored by the media and even,
for the most
part, by Obama's political opponents. The likelihood of Obama being
"Spitzerized" by the same federal "justice" system that forced an overnight
conversion of New York's Governor from a position of power to one of public
disgrace is not entirely remote, given again the well-known proclivity of the
Republican attack machine to exploit such openings. Obama's candidacy may well
be hanging by so tenuous a thread as the forebearance (so far) of an Illinois
grand jury's failure to indict Obama as a conspirator in the "Rezko case."

Another Obama vulnerability that may become acutely apparent very quickly was
raised by an investigative report http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16601
by Pam Martens that demonstrated the massive contributions of Wall Street
concerns to his campaign coffers. So far this has largely been papered-over by
the Obama campaign by emphasizing the huge collection of relatively small
donations mainly through internet fund-raising efforts, so that the campaign has
maintained its "populist" image to conceal its elitist base. I look for this
campaign maneuver to blow up as the GOP attack operatives take off their gloves
and begin to publish lists of Obama campaign contributors which contain some of
the most "toxic" names in American public life: Wall Street firms like Goldman
Sachs and Lehman Brothers who have been fingered as some of the "evil forces"
that forced the Wall Street meltdown that is felt on Main Street in the form of
an escalation of home mortgage forceclosures. Just in the last day John McCain
has emerged as the "maverick" Republican who would rein in Wall Street "special
interest," while Obama
joins most Democrats in being the staunchest supporters of the "Bush bail out"
(leading Arianna Huffington to refer contemptuously to Obama as a "bipartisan
musketeer" whose slogan is "one for all, all for Goldman Sachs.)"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/bailout-bil...)
Of course Democrats can respond to the sure-to-come GOP attacks with a retort of
"you guys (GOP) are (almost) as bad as us, because you too are supported (almost
as much) by the same Wall Street entities that you now are quick to say you are
going to be 'regulating.'" But Main Street may well be having none of this and
millions of people facing foreclosure on their homes are not going to take well
to a pissing contest between Republican and Democrats about whose monetary
policies are most "responsible" for the crisis and whose remedies are most
likely to be effective. At this point, the jig may be up for any chance of a
"viable" Obama candidacy.

Finally, I will comment on another couple of fatal flaws in the Obama bid for
the presidency. One of these is his selection of Joe Biden for his
Vice-Presidential running mate. Beyond some marginal effect of countering the
"Muslim" image of Obama by having "I am a Zionist" Biden on his ticket, his
nomination does nothing to add to the ticket's appeal to any important electoral
constituency. In contrast, the much (and deservedly) condemned choice of Sarah
Palin as McCain's running mate was an outstandingly successful move in that
direction. Political analysis has suggested that Bush held on to his presidency
in 2004 largely because a fundamentalist Christian constituency that largely
"sat out" the 2000 election returned with a vengeance to the GOP fold in 04 as
they exploited "wedge" issues by, for example, having "defense of marriage"
(anti-gay) amendments on the ballots of many "swing" states (like Florida),
bringing out the god, guns and abortion
obsessors in record numbers. By all accounts Palin may do the same for the 08
GOP ticket when, as I said, Biden does virtually nothing for the Democratic one.

Related to the Obama mis-step on Biden is a lesser-noted but perhaps ultimately
more consequential one. The Obama campaign has continued and intensified its
efforts at campaign fund-raising among wealthy donors, especially
Hollywood-connected ones. Even outside the California cash-cow for the party,
the campaign has found ways to rub their elitist funding tendencies in the noses
of less affluent voters. An article published last week http://socialistworker.org/2008/09/16/
two-worlds-in-one-city
shows Biden's visit to a $2600 a plate fund-raiser in Holyoke MA that raised
$300,000 for the campaign, with scarcely a perfunctory wave to folks on the
street of a city which is among America's most economically depressed ones.
Multi-million dollar fund-raisers like that hosted by Barbra Streisand in
Hollywood http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/marc_malkin/
b29380_barbra_streisand_in_tune_with_barack.html
raise lots of cash ($9 million from a single Streisand fund-raiser) for a
campaign that is already at record levels of funding, but they may raise as well
the feeling of much of the rest of the country toward the "Californicators"
whose Hollywood is but one of the manifestations of the "decadent" life styles
of West Coast "liberals." Association with well-privileged persons in Hollywood
and on Wall Street is not helpful to an Obama candidacy, which has already
experienced troubles in blue-collar "swing states" like Ohio, Pennsylvania and
Michigan, all of which were won by Hillary Clinton in the primaries largely on
the basis of working class resentment against the "life styles of the rich and
famous."

Do I sound here like the ghost of Christmas Future showing Ebenezer Scrooge how
his past and present behaviors are "tending" toward a miserable future should
Scrooge not "mend his ways?" I might take the analogy a step further, saying
with that "spirit" that there may yet be time for Obama remediation. The
campaign might yet pull out a victory if Obama were to do some of the following
things.

- declares himself as dedicated to the elimination of a pervasive level of
institutional racial discrimination which he acknowledges to exist.

- holds a press conference in which he "pre-emptively" raises the issue of his
"Rezko connections," presenting his "side" of that story before the GOP
swift-boaters get out their "seamy" side of same.

- announces that he is accepting no more campaign contributions and urges that
would-be supporters put their money into helping re-stock bereft food pantries
to feed the hungry or emergency relief for the construction of affordable
housing in New Orleans or for homeowners hoping to fend off foreclosure. It's
called "propaganda of the deed"... and it works!

Other things of a populist nature could be done, but these give you the idea of
what I am proposing to his campaign and, were they to be done with sincerity and
consistency, I could transfer my own support to Obama and the Democrats. (I'm a
life-long Democrat who has just "turned" Green). I have little reason to believe
that anything like this will happen. Since Obama's diminishing core of acolytes
will support him whatever he does or doesn't do, he and his supporters will
convince themselves that they can win with milquetoast policy positions and
cluelessness of their candidate's vulnerabilities, and will lose yet another
election as did the supporters of Gore and Kerry. This being the case, I think
all progressives should proceed to find an alternative to McCain/Palin ticket
which isn't that of the ill-fated Obama/Biden one. With eyes wide open to the
vulnerabilities of our own alternative choices, we must seek out those
candidates who are a "viable"
alternative to the much-feared McCain presidency. And yes, we need to go into
the heart of Obamania land and tell our Kool-aid affected friends that "a vote
for Obama is a vote for McCain."

Jerry D. Rose is retired as a Professor of Sociology from State University of
New York, now lives in Gainesville Florida where he edits and publishes The Sun
State Activist, which contains a daily digest of news and views of progressive
interest from around the nation and world. He may be contacted at
jerrydrose11@yahoo.com