An Obama Landslide Victory?

"Should all signs on Tuesday point to an Obama landslide, news directors say they will have no choice but to report the obvious."
- From a Reuters/NYT article "U.S. Media Ready For Possible Early Election Outcome " October 28, 2008

And Another Campaigner Resigns

The AP's political quote of the day reads,

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

'"It's not going to be the Barack and Hillary people who bring the factions together. It's going to be those of us who are still seen as neutral and have some standing in the party."

— Rep. Mike Doyle, a Democrat who represents Pittsburgh and has not endorsed either of his party's presidential candidates, Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton.'

As an ordinary citizen who is neutral, I feel the same kind of responsibility to guide my fellow Democrats (and the two campaigns) to come together or risk losing not only the Presidential race, but the integrity of the party. On this blog I keep telling the campaigns that, if the candidates care more for party and country than they care for their own ego and ambition, then we'll need to see two adults seeking fairness and urging supporters to stay positive and patient while they both (rightly) remain in this primary race. Heaven knows where the support they'd normally see from party luminaries to keep the party peaceful has gone! It almost seems that they've been left alone..perhaps purposely... to show their eventual capacity for unity when neither, after the voting's over and done, winds up with the number of delegates it'll take to snag the nomination.

Why does it seem that some newspaper editorials are setting wiser guidlines and promoting better ideas than some of the party elders? [See this one from today's Oakland Press].

I don't know where the party's wise elders and cooler heads are. I'm not the only one who's wondering. I think of Sen Ted Kennedy who admitted he made the endorsement that he made [for Obama] when he did because, in good part, he was angry with Bill Clinton's comments in South Carolina.

The exploitation of anger bleeds over on to almost every Democratic issue in the MSM coverage of the primary race now. I honestly think, with a woman and an African-American running so close a race, that the "party bosses" are afraid to side with either candidate for the fear of looking politically incorrect. They know they run the risk of being reviled by half the total number of Democratic voters if they make what they think might be the "wrong decision"...or ANY decision at all.

It's pitiful to even begin to suspect that should-be-leaders in the Democratic party who had a preference for one candidate or the other could've been responsible and guiding...but decided instead to hold back in a state of fear and/or muddled confusion.

The emotion and anger of yet another Democratic campaigner (this time Maxim Thorne, a well-educated and dedicated supporter of Obama) has gotten the better of him. Mr. Thorne's out of the campaign for sending out an email that looked more like something from the Ken Starr-inquisition era than a 2008 campaign commentary. I consider him, like others who've had to resign from these two campaigns recently, to be another all-too-human victim of a Democratic primary campaign with an all-too easy fallback on race/gender/personal issues; improper, slow, missing, and/or uncertain leadership from the party; unnecessary rage; and high emotion.

Until this thing works itself out [or until a Democratic Yoda appears], here's a recommendation from a fellow blogger with the screen-name wmthetriallawyer that says,

"Don't let the main stream media or the whackjobs out there distract you from certain realities. [..]..the host of people who have lined up to support or otherwise be media-defined surrogates of the Obama and Clinton campaigns. [..] People say really stupid stuff sometimes. And it is dissected ad nauseum [..] But I only really care about what the two candidates themselves say"

Olbermann Goes Too Far

I have to agree with Kate Stone's assessment of last night's dreadfully melodramatic performance by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann where he compared Hillary Clinton to David Duke. [While divisive garbage like this is being thrown at the American public by MSNBC's rival corporate MSM contender..and we Democratic chumps wind up taking all the damage from their ratings battle]. I happen to think Mr. Olbermann's trying very hard to please and promote himself with what he seems to think is an objective progressive crowd at Daily Kos, where he ran to post his comments from last night's Hillary-bashing segment. The tone of those comments rivaled a Sarah Bernhardt high-drama soliloquy. The deliverer of the bitter content of those comments stabbed wantonly at a Presidential candidate with a faux-rage that would've been laughable if It wasn't so careless. What Mr. Olbermann fails to realize is that there is virtually very little objectivity at the Daily Kos website as things stand in this primary race. I know. I've been a participant there for five years. Democrats are fighting there all the time now. He's catering to one side of a broken party. Isn't that kind of like Jerry Springer exploiting dysfunctional families for entertainment's sake?

Speaking of the drama diva herself..while performing in La Tosca in Rio de Janeiro circa 1905, Sarah Bernhardt received an injury to her right knee during the final scene that eventually, due to untreatable infection, resulted in her entire right leg being amputated. With his corny and Democrat-dividing performance, I think Keith Olbermann, by breaking trust with many progressives last night, may well have caused an infection that could wind up amputating his career as a credible political pundit.

Too bad. For a while he was hitting some home runs. He was the last talk-show host on MSNBC to whom I'd been giving an open-minded listen. He polluted my open mind last night.

________________

* This is from me... a longtime blogger...a consistently objective John Edwards supporter who's hoping for the two remaining candidates to come together for the party's sake and take on some of Sen Edwards' issues instead of making me remember that he was the only grown-up on the room most of the time. This week I saw a powerful Democrat go down for spending God-knows-how much on hookers while the candidate I supported caught shit in the idiot MSM for getting a $400 haircut. I'm no longer in the mood to tolerate anyone willing to divide our party...that includes the remaining candidates and well-paid self-promoting pundits like Mr. Olbermann.

I realize that my opinion isn't the popular one, but it comes from an unbiased heart and mind. Fairness, in this case, was not given to Sen Clinton, who was delivering a heartfelt public apology as Olbermann was impulsively skewing her.. before he gave it one news cycle to see what Clinton would do. I didn't subscribe to the notion that some other bloggers have been expressing about Olbermann being "Obama's newscaster"...until last night. My party's been voting for more than just one candidate. Neither of the campaigns' surrogates have been innocent of the charge of damaging negativity.