The Obama Left

The American left can be divided into three distinct strands, each with its own characteristics, identifiers, and methods of operation: the wimp left, the weird left, and the hard left.

The wimp left is the largest, most amorphous, and least impressive faction. These are the people who are leftists because the neighbors are. They're the NPR listeners, the PBS watchers, the slogan repeaters. They view the left as a lifestyle choice, one that makes you a better person (as they never cease telling you). Wimp leftists usually confine their activities to bumper stickers and "trying to live a politically-correct lifestyle", but often break into sporadic bouts of activity involving recycling, marching, or posting on DU or Kos. The New York Times recently featured a story http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/02/us/02malaria.html about a craze for purchasing mosquito nets for underprivileged Africans that captures the wimp left in all its faddishness, self-righteousness, and futility (the nets in question are supplied in lieu of DDT, the only effective method of preventing malaria, which means that the U.S. do-gooders are actually making things worse). Even the photo is characteristic: precocious children, prematurely dowdy woman, self-conscious emotionalism.

(Obama foreign policy advisor Richard Danzig's suggestion, that we turn to Winnie-the-Pooh for expertise on counterterrorism strategy is all of a piece with this tendency. Misplaced whimsy is a major indicator of wimp leftism. Many readers will recall the craze for giving copies of Dr. Seuss to college grads a few years ago.)

We're all familiar with these types - they appear constantly in media "person in the street" interviews, furrowing their brows and pensively staring off into the distance before intoning that "arms are for hugging", "global warming is about our grandchildren", "change is about hope", or whatever the slogan of the moment happens to be. Wimp lefties don't know much about politics, ideology, or anything else. But they know what's right -- or they will, as soon as the mass media tells them. They're very nice people. They really are. That's what makes them dangerous.

To many conservatives, the weird left -- AKA the wacko left or the loony left, is the left, the perfect representation of left-wing thinking and behavior. The wacko left can be defined as leftism as personality disorder, the contemporary expression of Orwell's "nudists, fruit-juice drinkers, and sandal wearers". They tend to be obsessive single-issue types, overwhelmed with paranoia and consumed with conspiracy theories.

9/11 Truthers are the purest current example of the weird left, as are "AIDS is a CIA plot" types, principally among blacks. These are the people most often found romping on DU and Kos. Although we might be tempted to view them as a pure liability, that in fact is not the case. While their equivalent on the right -- Birchers, McCarthyites and so on -- are usually isolated or ejected, weird lefties actually serve quite a useful purpose, acting as a conduit for ideas -- gay marriage, animal rights, Karl Rove as evil mastermind -- too grotesque to be planted in any other way. Examples of the loony left include such figures as Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan.

The hard left is the core left, the armature without which the other factions would fall apart. They are directly descended from the communist groups (the CPUSA, Trotsyites, and so forth) of the `30s and `40s, through New Left organizations such as the SDS and the Weathermen. The hard left consists of intelligentsia and activists, people who spend their lives reading Alinsky http://www.fraw.org.uk/library/002/anarchism/alinsky_radical.html and Gramsci http://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/intro.htm and trying their damndest to put those dicta into practice. They are usually found in universities and surrounding communities, though they are also present in left-wing think tanks and lobbying outfits. Most of us will go through life without ever knowingly encountering one of them. Through their intellectual control over the much larger wimp left (who would be utterly lost without their direction), they possess influence all out of proportion to their numbers. The prototype of the American hard leftist is Tom Hayden.

Usually, a political candidate running on a left-wing platform will be associated with one strand in particular. For hard leftists we have Henry Wallace fronting for the communists in 1948, and George McGovern acting as point man for the antiwar movement in 1972. Representatives of the weird left are rarer, although we do have Dennis Kucinich. As in anything else, there is no lack of wimp leftists in presidential politics -- Kerry, Gore, Mondale... take your pick. Michael Dukakis' unwillingness to use the death penalty for a hypothetical convicted rapist/murderer of his wife is wimp leftism in chemically pure form.

The extraordinary thing about Barack Obama is that he's intimately connected to all these factions in a way that may never quite have been the case before. The wacko left is represented by Jeremiah Wright and James P. Meeks, with their AIDS conspiracies and related yarns, and ACORN, the leftist fringe group for which Obama served as attorney for many years. The hard left is represented by his Marxist mentor Frank Marshall Davis, http://www.aim.org/aim%1ecolumn/obamas%1ecommunist%1ementor/ who introduced Obama to left-wing politics at an early age, Fr. Michael Pfleger, an advocate of "liberation theology", the application of Marxism to Christianity, and former Weatherman Bill Ayers, who was contending that America could be set right by a few bombs as late as September 11, 2001.

The wimp left is, obviously enough, the Obama voter.

Never, I think, has any politician been so closely and equally intertwined with all three aspects of American leftism. It's as if Obama were out to corner the entire American left, leaving no room for anyone else. If that was the case, then he's succeeded.

Of course, it may not have been intentional at all. It may simply be the result of an entire life spent with the left since his early encounters with Davis. But intentionally or not, Obama appears to be adapting the methods of the left, the means by which sanitized, acceptable versions of left-wing ideas are introduced into American political discourse, as part of his campaign strategy.

The Gramscian tactics utilized by the American left were predicated on the internal takeover of various institutions (media, the academy, education) which could then be used to push a left-wing agenda. But there were limitations to this technique: these institutions were nowhere near as powerful in the U.S. as in Gramsci's Europe, where government monopolies and elitism are common. This limited the influence and reach of entrenched American leftists.

This is where the left's triune nature came in. The millions comprising the wimp left served as a transmission belt for ideas and practices developed by the hard leftists of the academy and the activist organizations. By this means such ideas were "laundered", appearing to emerge from sincere, befuddled "liberals", rather than the career apparatchiks, which eased their acceptance by the public at large. More bizarre concepts were presented by the wacko left (the most effective way to make something seem harmless is to arrange to have it said by a clown). If there was too much resistance, the attempt was curtailed, and the wimps, or alternately the wackballs, took the punishment. The hardcore lefties remained safely insulated.

This is an extraordinarily fruitful technique, allowing the introduction and cultivation of ideas -- gay marriage, terrorist nobility, contempt for the armed forces -- that could be introduced in no other way.

Obama appears to be doing much the same thing in his political strategy, selling himself -- or rather, his campaign persona -- in similar fashion. Through his connection to ACORN, Pfleger, and Ayers, Obama assures the hard left that he is one of them, an adherent of their tactics and goals. His connections to Black Liberation Theology imply at least some sympathy for the wacko left. But at the same time, he presents himself to the broader audience of wimps as a purely "liberal" figure, the second coming of JFK, if not the Redeemer Himself.

Every now and then, Obama will come up with a proposal derived directly from the hard-left playbook -- tax the rich, unilateral retreat from Iraq, "war crimes trials" -- couched in terms acceptable to wimp leftists. If a public backlash develops, he simply drops it and returns to soothing Volvo-and-latte platitudes, using the wimps in the same manner as the hard left -- as a shield for his actual agenda.

It's an interesting strategy. But can it work? It's based on several assumptions - that the U.S. is at base a leftist country, open to a leftist message; that the wimp left is a powerful influence; and that a tactic designed for use over the long term can work in the pressure-cooker atmosphere of a political campaign.

But the U.S. remains a center-right country. The wimp left is an object of derision (even among themselves) as much as anything else. And the disturbing results obtained by the hard leftists have come only after lengthy effort, at times stretching to decades.

It's also extremely risky. Obama's worst moments have arisen from his relationships with members of the more radical left-wing branches, Jeremiah Wright representing the loony left, Pfleger and Ayers the hard left. In no case did his elaborately contrived latte-left facade protect him from the ensuing controversy.

Clearly, this strategy comprises a weakness. Obama is figuratively leaping from stone to stone, from a hard-left position here to a "liberal" one there, always keeping on the move, never allowing himself to be cornered, never getting his feet wet. The trick is to hit him in mid-leap and assure that he gets a good dunking. Obama has gotten an easy ride in his previous campaign crises through the assumption that the offenses were personal -- that the problem lay in his relations with Wright, Pfleger and so on. But they were no such thing -- it was the ideas that were the problem.

And Obama was never seriously questioned about those ideas. Did he accept Pfleger's vision of Christ as a revolutionary? Did he share Ayers' blazing contempt for American society? He must have expressed belief in Black Liberation Theology, a doctrine of black supremacy, when joining Jeremiah Wright's church. Did he truly believe it then? Does he believe it now? If not, when did he stop believing it?

By this means, Obama can be cornered. He does not like being cornered. As the last few months make clear, he does not take it well. Corner him enough times, and his facade will crack, his image as a genial Starbucks and Whole Foods lefty will lie in tatters, and his adherence to the cold and crazed doctrines of the core left will be exposed for what it is.

It's not a complete strategy, of course. But the customary electoral strategy of GOP operatives and consultants (e.g. Tom Delay's recent accusation http://edition.cnn.com/POLITICS/blogs/politicalticker/2006/12/is%1eobama%1emarxist%1eleftist.html of Marxism won't work. If didn't work during the Cold War, so it certainly won't work today.)

Obama is a strange candidate -- how strange we have as yet no clear idea. Revealing the depths of that strangeness calls for unconventional political tactics, and the will to use them.

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Obama's oil policy

We have a problem, and it's serious. It's not a particularly new problem, but it does seem to be getting noticeably worse. The problem is that, in a number of areas, our politicians, and sadly, a great number of our people, no longer seem to be able to recognize reality. They simply believe things that cannot possibly be true. The recent wrangling over oil prices, and policy responses epitomize this unhinged mindset.

I wish I could believe this irrationality was confined to energy policy, because that is one area where an inability to moor policy to reality has a long-standing tradition. I happen to work with a person who, back in the 1970s was employed in the oil fields of Kansas. At that time, we were suffering from a big oil price shock as well. One of the "solutions" the Carter Administration came up with was a regulation that said essentially the following to the oil companies:

"The price of oil is too high. We need to control it, so that consumers pay a more reasonable price for oil. So, if you have a drilling lease that produces, on average, more than 100 barrrels a day of oil per well, then you have to sell that oil at no more than $3.50 per barrel. It doesn't matter if the wells are injection or extraction wells. It doesn't matter if most of the wells are capped. At any rate of extraction that averages more than 100 barrels per day per well, you can only sell oil from that lease for $3.50 a barrel. On the other hand, the stripper price for oil, i.e., the actual market price, is significantly higher than $3.50. So, if your lease averages 100 barrels of oil per well every day or less, you can sell that oil for the stripper price, and make a reasonable profit."

What do you suppose happened?

If you are a logical thinker, you'll realize immediately that what happened was that the oil companies did everything possible to ensure that every lease produced an average of less than 100 barrels per rig per day. They capped wells. They turned other wells into injection wells. If they had to, on a 10-well lease, they capped seven, used two others for injection, and produced 99 barrels from a remaining single extraction well.

The end result, of course, was a reduction in the totals amount of available oil, and a particular shortage of price-controlled oil. How can any other result have been reasonably expected?

Now, we're seeking to repeat that same sort of mistake in a number of different ways.

For instance, that Obama supporter on the Cavuto show earlier this week. She declared, with perfect sincerity, that if the government nationalized the oil refineries, and took control of them, that the government could set prices. As if prices bore no relationship to any real-world factors. The government can disguise the price by selling it at a price lower than the cost of production-as long as the remainder of costs are recovered in some other way, i.e., through general taxation. But the cost of production is what it is, and if it isn't paid, then oil won't be produced. No one can "set" prices. It is, literally, impossibility. The price of a good must at least cover the cost of production.

Obama himself weighed in with a few gems. Opening our coastlines to offshore drilling would take at least a decade to produce any oil at all, and the effect on gasoline prices would be negligible at best since America only has 3 percent of the world's oil, Obama said in a statement that did not explicitly distinguish between oil and gas drilling.

Well, now that I've had Mr. Obama explain this to me, I've decided there's no reason to save for retirement. After all, it'll take at least 30 years for that saved money to add up to any significant amount, and by then, I could be so rich I won't even need it.

Of course, in the real world, we actually have 1.2 trillion barrels of oil sitting in oil shale under Colorado, of which about 800 billion barrels are technically recoverable today. That's enough oil to fulfill all of America's energy needs for about 40 years. And, while we're on the subject, we've got about 23 trillion ft3 of natural gas, which could motor us along for another century or so.

But why drill for it? Bit of a waste of time, apparently. But, wait, it gets better. In the same speech, he said:

We will have spent by the time this thing is over well over a trillion dollars, one trillion dollars. Think about what we could have done with a trillion dollars. Think about, think about what we could have done if we had invested even half of that even a quarter of that into research into clean energy, developing new ways of transporting people, if we had tried to look at how are we going to create a new engine that doesn't run on fossil fuels. Imagine that. Over the last five years, we could be in a position now where we could have perhaps sliced our energy consumption by a third, and if we had done that gas prices would be low because people wouldn't be using gas.

So, let's see if I got this straight. If we start drilling for oil, it won't make any difference, but if we'ed spent a quarter trillion bucks five years ago, we'd all have replicators, transporters, and the warp drive engine today?

I think someone's been sneaking into the Jeffries tube for illicit nips of Arcturan brandy a few times too often. Because it's fairly likely that we'd've poured that quarter-trillion down a black hole for no return at all.

Oh, and by the way, who is this "we" Mr. Obama is talking about here? It isn't the government. It's all of us, individually, buying gas, paying electric bills, etc. That trillion dollars didn't come out of some central fund overseen by the government. It was each of us, making voluntary purchases that spent it.

So, five years ago, there wasn't any quarter trillion dollars to be spent on antimatter and dilithium crystals, because we had another use for it, namely, driving to work, heating our homes, and cooking our food. And the only way there'll be a quarter-billion dollars available to do it in the future is if Mr. Obama hikes taxes to take it away from us by force.

I guess Mr. Obama's answer is to spend the next trillion dollars on research into warp drive, which will magically pay off in a ten years, instead of in drilling, which won't accomplish jack.

That is, quite literally, fantastic thinking. It is so divorced from reality-from the way the real world actually works-that it defies description. It is one of the stupidest intellectual positions I have ever heard.

And I have no doubt he believes it with religious fervor.

It's no different with health care, either. The same divorce from fact and reality applies there, too.

Sure, the method of providing health insurance sucks in this country. It sucks primarily because it is a system designed by government to ensure that employers, of all people, provide health insurance for employees. It has the practical effect of ensuring that the people who actually consume health care are not the people who purchase insurance. And the people who consume health care have no choice in the insurance plan they receive. That's the system designed by FDR's administration, and the fact that it works in a less than satisfactory manner is presumed to be the fault of "the market".

And what "market" would that be, precisely?

It's as if there's a determined effort to ignore the way the world actually works and substitute a fantasy for it in order to accomplish some favored political goal.

It's not just liberals who do this, of course. Right now, LA governor Bobby Jindal has a new bill sitting on his desk from the legislature that would require the teaching of Intelligent Design in the science curriculum of public schools. But, Intelligent Design, whatever else it may be-and it may even be true, for all we know-isn't science. If it isn't testable, repeatable, predictive, and falsifiable, it just isn't science, and doesn't be deserved to be taught as such. Yes, science is materialistic, but matter is the only thing we can access. Talk of the Designer, however useful it may be in other areas, has nothing whatever to do with science.

If you want to believe the Baby Jesus created the world at 9:06 am on April 21st, 4004 BC, you're perfectly free to do so. But if you can't prove it by reference to the physical world, it isn't science. Oh, while we're talking about it, maybe the Baby Jesus should've put a little more thought into how much oil we needed when he slapped the whole thing together.

This kind of resistance to reality doesn't bode well for us. It's all part and parcel of the decline of the republic, and the civilization that produced it. Whatever is, is. And no amount of wishful thinking, or policy built on fantasy will make things other than what they are. All that you can accomplish by doing so is simply to make things worse for everyone.

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Obama and big corn

If Obama wants energy independence through alternative fuels, why doesn't he back imported sugar-based ethanol? This old-style politician knows it isn't grown in the Midwest and Brazil has no electoral votes

Barack Obama says he represents change. He also criticizes John McCain for trying to drill our way to energy independence to add to the profits of Big Oil. But it's Obama who's playing politics by trying to plant our way to energy independence, buying votes with alternative fuel subsidies that benefit ethanol producers such as Archer Daniels Midland.

ADM is based in Illinois, the second-largest corn-producing state. Not long after arriving in the U.S. Senate, Obama flew twice on corporate jets owned by the nation's largest ethanol producer. Imagine if McCain flew on the corporate jets of Exxon Mobil.

Corn-based ethanol gets a 51-cents-a-gallon tax subsidy that will cost taxpayers $4.5 billion this year. McCain opposes ethanol subsidies while Obama supports them. McCain opposed them even though Iowa is the first caucus state. Obama, touted by Caroline Kennedy as another JFK, was no profile in courage in Iowa.

That subsidy was cut to 45 cents a gallon in the new farm bill, but more money was pushed toward other biofuels such as switch grass. The Democrats can't wait for offshore oil or ANWR, but they can wait for switch grass. The tariff on imported ethanol was extended. Neither candidate voted on the bill, but Obama said he supported it. McCain said as president he would have vetoed it.

If Obama is sincere about alternative fuels, why does he oppose imported sugar-based ethanol from countries like Brazil? He supports not only the domestic subsidy, but a 54-cents-a-gallon tariff on imported ethanol. McCain opposes both. Corn ethanol is less energy-efficient and costs more. It generates less than two units of energy for every unit of energy used to produce it. Ethanol made from sugar cane has an energy ratio of more than 8-to-1. Production costs and land prices are cheaper in the countries that produce it.

This year, according to John Lott Jr., senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, 34% of U.S. corn - some 3.65 billion bushels - will be used for fuel. Putting this much food into our gas tanks hasn't reduced gas prices, but it has raised food prices. Farmers in vote-rich farm states plant corn for fuel, not only raising the price of corn, but also milk, eggs, meat and even bread as wheat fields are converted to corn.

Last year, as President Bush was about to sign an energy cooperation agreement with Brazil, Obama said the move would hurt "our country's drive toward energy independence." Really? The only thing it might hurt is Obama's drive to the White House.

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Proof Obama Distorts Bible

Earlier this week, liberals went off their rocker defending Obama's biblical worldview against Dr. James Dobson's comments that he distorts the bible. Dobson was referring to an Obama speech two years ago, which had liberals scrambling to come up with a website defending Obama. The result was JamesDobsonDoesntSpeakForMe. Today, we learned that an Obama campaign worker was instrumental in the launch of that website.

Caldwell, who is affiliated with the website JamesDobsonDoesntSpeakForMe.com, initially told OneNewsNow that the website was operated by Matthew 25, a political action committee working with Obama supporters. However, upon investigation, it was found that the site was actually registered to Alyssa Martin, an intern in the Obama campaign's "religious affairs" department. The domain registration has since been changed to Pastor Caldwell's name.

In an earlier interview, Caldwell told OneNewsNow he did not know Alyssa Martin, but on Thursday afternoon admitted the intern had been helping him set up the website. He also reported that to his knowledge, she is no longer with the Obama campaign.

It is not surprising to learn that an Obama staffer was involved in the setup of this website. It pairs Dobson statements with Obama statements that do not correspond. It gives the appearance that Obama is responding to Dobson, when in fact, the reverse is the truth. Just as Obama plucks scriptures out of context, he has his staff painting an a false image of other Christians in an attempt to hide his wolf's clothing from the sheep.

In addition, on Father's Day, Barack Obama made a speech at the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago, Illinois, in which he said that "We need fathers to recognize that responsibility doesn't just end at conception." I am thrilled that Sen. Obama believes in the responsibility of fathers, but his voting record contradicts his own statements. He consistently has voted to end life after conception.

Tony Perkins of Family Research Council recorded a video response to this message in which he asks Senator Obama: if my responsibility as a father began at conception, isn't that when the lives of my children began?

Of course, Obama's answer will be that he personally disagrees with child-killing, but the choice should remain legal for women. This may pass as a convincing argument to a liberal, who has no absolutes, and creates values to mold to any given issue. But to a Christian, you cannot twist a moral issue into a political one without distorting the bible. The bible is very clear that murder is a sin. And since most of our Constitution was based on biblical values, the taking of innocent life is illegal. There is a biblical mandate for Christians to defend the defenseless. Obama's distorted interpretation of the bible results in a personal view and political action that contradict one another.

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Obama's Academic Credentials

Obama has often invoked his academic credentials as a proxy for quality in his opinions, including why he is qualified to find certain judicial nominees unqualified or to criticize some judicial opinions. I do not dispute that he had a significant distinction teaching, as the University of Chicago recognizes. But I think most academics expect people claiming to be academics (or former ones) to have some record of scholarship.

If you enter "au(obama)" in the Westlaw "Journals and Law Reviews" database, which is the means to find articles authored by the name in parentheses, you get nothing. Zero results; no articles.

Entering "Obama" in a search of the Social Science Research Network ("SSRN"), a place where most academics place their published scholarly works, retrieves zero results. Again, no articles/no scholarship.

I really don't care much if our politicians are academics or not. But, if they do claim to be so and lack the traditional elements of serious scholarship, that is a problem.

I hope I am wrong. Obama is throwing around a credential as an academic quite often. If any reader can send me an academic article, a serious piece of legal scholarship, he has written, please do and I will retract this post.

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Racism and the 2008 Election Process

So much for all the years of crying and hand wringing for a colorblind society.

A colorblind society is what racial equalist have been crying and wringing their hands over for years. It always seemed a plausible and equitable racial nirvana worthy of achievement. But, historically, when trying to legislate and force an intangible social change, it has never had the desired effect after implementing the application process--especially when there is a black candidate running for president and many of his supporters agree with nothing he represents other than the color of his skin. Obama received over 90% of the black vote in some of the primaries against Hillary Clinton. This, coming from the fair-weather black voters, who had Clinton up by 40 points at one time, and when it looked as if Obama could actually pull it off after winning a few primaries, they came skulking back, but not to Obama per se, but to the pigmentation of his skin.

Obama has accumulated a quantum of white disciples who will vote for him only 1) because of his, and their, nonsensical mantra for change for changes sake, 2) solely because of identity politics 3) they despise the Republican party so much they will vote for whomever the Democrat party presents regardless of platform. The proportion of voters who would not vote for a highly qualified black person solely because of their race is negligible in comparison to voters who would vote for a black candidate just because they are black. The United States, as a country, has achieved an admirable level of colorblindness, but it has unfortunately only been embraced, predominantly, by white America. From a racist perspective, voting for a candidate only because they are black is indiscernible from not voting for a candidate because they are black. And to vote for a black candidate, as many voters have said they would, just because it would be making history, is a malignancy to the democratic process.

Armstrong Williams is a conservative talk show host. He also happens to be black. He champions the virtues of conservatism and Christianity across the airwaves. He has also never voted for a Democrat for president. He has a recording on his website, where he drones on and on about how far to the left Obama is, how liberal he is, his platform and policy faults, and extols the qualifications of John McCain. Yet, he speaks equivocally around the fact that he will not vote for a Republican just because they are a Republican come November. There are only two candidates left, Barack Obama--the antithesis of all conservative and Christian values--and John McCain. If one is an authentic conservative and is involved in the political process, or the reporting of it, as Williams is, one knows the core differences between the two candidates. Obama does, with empirical veracity, have the most liberal voting record in the Senate. If you are black, and if you espouse conservative values, and are torn on who to vote for at this juncture-you are at best, a false prophet, and should be unceremoniously tossed from your conservative pulpit for choosing skin color over the values you purport.

Although the focus of this article was Armstrong Williams, there are many conservative blacks, including conservative black Congressmen, who have expressed the same conviction as Williams. They, by all appearances, believe that being a conservative is just a revenue or power generating, political plaything that can be discarded when a better opportunity presents itself, or a presidential candidate of the same pigmentation comes along. The black conservative turncoats enjoy chastising the Republican Party for not doing enough for blacks, when in reality, the best thing to give someone is an opportunity--but that is not good enough for them. What happened to the patriotic words of JFK: Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.

Whoopi Goldberg, while delving into the intellectual metaphysics of racism and politics--an area she is highly qualified to ingress--explained why she will vote for Obama solely because he is black. She responded to the statement, by a white person, of why a voter should look beyond skin color and look at a candidate's qualifications, experience, and the whole picture before picking a candidate. Goldberg glibly stated, "That's a very white way to look at it." Is Goldberg's statement a black way to look at it? Is this viewpoint commonly accepted within the black community? Is it "white" to be concerned about a candidate's qualifications?

Is Obama the great uniter? Based on his racist associations--no; based on his record as a politician, both state and federal--no; based on his personal life--no; based on his terrorist associations--no; based on his criminal associations--no; based on his "axis of evil" endorsements-no. As a leader of a country as diverse as the United States, one cannot lead a country as "one people", and focus and placate to one segment.

Obama's most recent inclusion/exclusion politics came to light this past Father's Day when he prefaced, what could have been a inspiring speech had it been inclusive of all fathers instead of focusing on black fathers, with the words, "You and I know how true this is in the African-American community." Obama called on black fathers who are "missing from too many lives and too many homes," to become active in raising their children. Not all fathers, only black fathers. Although all families suffer for the lack of a father, Obama cannot move past his presumptive racism and speak to all fathers.

The partisans, who are so blindly desperate for Obama to win the presidency, are placing an "all or nothing" bet on him. If he is elected President, conventional wisdom will dictate it was because he is black. And conversely, when he fails--and he will fail spectacularly in the capacity of President--conventional wisdom will dictate he failed because he is black. That will be the prevailing stigma a qualified black presidential candidate will have to overcome--in the not so near future, thanks to the idiocy of the voters. By nominating a black candidate of Obama's character, the Democrat Party and its voters, have put the black community in a no-win situation for future elections. Obama's eminent failure will be because he is obscenely deficient in experience, aptitude, and character to be the Commander in Chief--not because of his skin color.

Does this cast the American voter, in general, as a myopic Pollyanna ? Absolutely, especially when coupled with the fact that the Founding Fathers feared what would happen if there was a direct election for the Presidency. They feared, and rightly so, that some silver tongued mountebank would cause the plebeians and the intellectual defects to swoon and faint on command and march, in a state of catatonic stupor, to the voting booth to make good on their spellbound allegiance. To minimize the chances of this apocalyptic event occurring, the founders devised the Electoral College. Thanks to the prophetic design of the Founding Fathers, Obama could very well win the popular vote, but lose the electoral vote in the general election, and the fundamentals of democracy can, once again, stay somewhat intact, much to the chagrin of Marxists.

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