Two things have become very clear in the days since the Pennsylvania primary:
- This thing has to end. Soon
- Jeremiah Wright needs to shut up. Now.
I haven’t been on the “someone needs to concede” bandwagon yet this campaign. I actually think it’s good for the Democrats and good for the voters — hell, it’s good for America — to have all this time to meet the candidates, see how they react under fire (because this ain’t nothing like what the Republicans will throw at them in September) and get a lot of that baggage stuff out of the way. Also, it should be a chance to really look at their policies, examine their differences — how are their health care plans different, what are they going to do about Iran, what’s their attitude about coal — and make some decisions about where the Democrats should focus in the next eight years.
But no. Now we are at the point where the candidates and the media following the candidates are just endlessly pick, pick, picking. And it’s beyond annoying. If North Carolina and Indiana can’t get the Democrats out of this quicksand campaign, those superdelegates need to march themselves up to a podium, release a statement and support a candidate. And then if it’s still split, Howard Dean, as DNC chair, needs to get all parties in a room and slug it out.
And part of the reason it’s annoying right now is because Jeremiah Wright won’t stop talking. Look, I’m a progressive, church-going Democrat. I agree with at least 50% of what he says. I can understand where he’s coming from on another 25%. He’s a fascinating person with a fascinating story. I think a lot of what he is saying is interesting and worthy of discussion. But not this way. He has to know he isn’t doing Obama any favors right now.
A few weeks ago — a million years in campaign-time — Obama gave a speech about race in America. And it was good. And it was going to change the way we discussed race. Maybe. It was at least going to change how we discussed it during this campaign. So maybe he sullied it a wee bit by talking about his grandmother, the bitter people in Pennsylvania, jello mold dinners growing up. Maybe it became less about race and more about class? Was anyone really paying attention anymore? Probably not.
But then Jeremiah Wright does his media blitz and the blog world explodes. So a story that might have been allowed to die is suddenly alive again. Is the guy narcissistic? Working for the Clintons?
Someone at work — a young African-American — asked me if Wright was scaring white people. I said I didn’t think it was that white people generally were scared of what he was saying; it was more that people were dismissive and annoyed because it reeks of old-style leftist, 70s separation politics — exactly what Obama is trying to avoid because is exactly what moderate white voters react against. And Wright is now, for better or worse, pretty closely tied with Obama. So Obama is in a bit of a bind: if he wants to break away from that old-style politic and not alienate the new, young, moderate and independent voters who have been supporting him, he is going to have to come out and strongly repudiate Wright. How should he respond? Should he respond?
But I’m mostly annoyed that even though gasoline is $3.75 cents/gallon in my neighborhood (oil closed today at $118.75/bbl); we can’t even protect our own fortified Green Zone in Iraq; people are eating dirt in Haiti and kids are dying in Gaza, CNN won’t stop showing the stupid, stupid Wright clips.
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Way to go, urbanmennonite! Excellent analysis! Which brings me to what I’ve been saying for years. And that is that political campaigns in the USA go on far too long, allowing time for the endless nit-picking nonsense which we are currently seeing. The average person just gets tired of it all and tunes out. And then when something comes up to which we should be paying attention, cynicism or apathy have set in, and nobody is listening any more. For goodness sake, we are not electing a monarch for life, but rather a president for 4 years! Not that it should be taken lightly……. but focus on what’s important to people. Part of the problem is the media hype. But maybe that’s what people want, which is really discouraging.
I don’t know that I agree totally with your point that our campaigns go on too long. They probably shouldn’t last the year and an half that this one will end up being.
But like I said at the beginning of the post, I think it’s good for the voters to have a chance to get to know the candidates and their policies, particularly during the primary season. They do the same thing in Europe, they just divorce the prime minister campaigns from the heads of the party campaign.
Because it’s different in Canada and Europe. They don’t elect people to office, they elect the party. And here in the US, that isn’t the case at all. So, in essence, because we don’t have heads of parties that become the de facto candidates, this is the best our system can do.
In retrospect, the DNC is going to see that six weeks between Super Tuesday and the Pennsylvania primary was too long. It isn’t so much the length of the election as the length of the primary season that’s the problem this time around.