Irrational Obama Exuberance

[babylonsister]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-11-26/irrational-obama-exuberance/

Irrational Obama Exuberance

by John Avlon

snip//

The Low Road didn't lead to the White House: In his stump speeches before Iowa, Obama promised to lead a "party that doesn't just focus on how to win but why we should." He was campaigning against the hyper-partisan politics of personal destruction that has dominated Washington for too long. What's more remarkable and gratifying is that he kept his word.

Cynical political consultants love to point out that while Americans always say they want less negative campaigning, it works. The end, in their eyes, justifies the means. That's how hardball is played. And even honorable politicians can fall into this trap—when George H. W. Bush listened to Lee Atwater, the Willie Horton ad was deployed. The message: You have to be willing to campaign dirty in order to have the opportunity to govern clean.

But Obama kept his own counsel and elevated the game. Faced with a bewildering array of low-blow attacks, first from the Hillary Clinton campaign and then McCain-Palin, Obama kept his cool. He was called a socialist who palled around with terrorists; hysterical whisper campaigns alleged that he was a Muslim Marxist Manchurian candidate, even the anti-Christ, while official opposition ads at times were almost uniformly negative.

Faced with outright fear-mongering, Obama did not respond in kind. He realized that taking the bait would create a moral equivalence while allowing opponents to play the victim card. Instead, in a bit of political judo, he made the attacks the issue, a desperate sign of the politics of the past. He was called weak by some for not firing back, but he understood that we actually do want honor restored to our politics. Obama gambled on the common sense and the common decency of the American people, and he won.

So there are reasons for the afterglow after this historic election. Enjoy it. The Washington sausage-making process will commence soon enough. But by appealing to the better angels of our nature, as opposed to betting on the success of partisan politics as usual, President-elect Obama has uplifted our national image and updated the American Dream. That's what we call a new birth of freedom. And that's reason to give thanks.

[mmonk]

1. True unity in the US is not possible without exposure

of what happened and with continued fake media pushing inaccuracies, distortions, and political ideology instead of news.

[midnight]

2. I agree.

[Whisp]

8. how the media made the Obama campaign as low as the Clinton and McCain one...

they reported the 'attack' ads being equally repugnant from both sides which is a big fat bare assed lie in both campaigns - Obama carried his head up with dignity, the other too were scrambling in the sty like they are used to.

[saltpoint]

3. Obama and his campaign team ran a cleaner and much smarter campaign than

McCain.

When the Rev. Wright dust-up started to dominate, or should I say when the media allowed the totally disingenuous story of Rev. Wright to become an "issue," Obama responded with the "More Perfect Union" address in Pahiladelphia.

I thought that was a defining moment in the campaign.

[tabatha]

4. And the blogs were full of angst - urging Obama to fight back.

[saltpoint]

5. I liked the descriptions of 'jujitsu' used sometimes to

characterize Obama's response to the low-end attacks by McCain, Palin, etc.

It was a signal that there's still a deep reservoir of affirmation out there.

Evidently the Right thought the Rev. Wright issue and the "palling around with terrorists" issue would be successful for them.

Looks like the Right guessed wrong.

[tabatha]

6. Yes, isn't it cool that the McCain team tried to make it about

character and not issues, and they lost out.

But maybe even cooler is that possibly Obama won on the character issue as well.

[saltpoint]

7. Agree. It takes just the right stake sometimes to pound through

Lee Atwater's cold heart. Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, FOX News, etc.

But Barack Obama seemed to have just such a stake in stock.

[BumRushDaShow]

9. Don't forget though

that thanks to many of us here, he had enough money to spend for enough ads in enough places to essentially "drown out the negative with positive". He was also able to counter the RW-biased lunatic fringe M$M spewage instantly thanks to the internet (via his own campaign website and the various smear-fighting websties). Word of mouth truth propagated from the bottom up and eventually prevailed.

So it wasn't just trying to stay "positive" (certainly previous Democratic candidates tried as well), it was the ability to strategically use sheer brute force to put out the right message at the right place, and right time, every time.

[FrenchieCat]

10. Agreed.

And many undecideds went with Barack solely because they were totally turned off by the McCain ads....

I'm even certain that those eleventh hour Rev. Wright ads ran by that 527 24/7 the last week of the election on cable television turned more people off of McCain than Barack; afterall, it was McCain who kept saying that he wasn't going to go there. Problem for McCain is that voters aren't so discerning as to who is running the ads, since any potential President should be enough of a leader to control that shit. Since McCain wasn't, those ads most likely ended up hurting him more than helping, IMO.

[qwlauren35]

12. History will spin it to look easier than it was.

Obama had more money, more ground troops, a cleaner message, a younger candidate...

And McCain picked an extremely controversial running mate who ran counter to every strength his ticket had.

When his opposition "wasn't allowed" to play the race card, they raised questions about the candidate's religion and associated him with terrorists... and in previous years IT WOULD HAVE WORKED.

I think it was the combination of money AND ground troops. I don't think he could have won without both.

[Brazenly Liberal]

11. Irrational Obama Exuberance

Doin it right: