The Democrats' Failing Strategy -- Obama Tastes own Medicine

At his recent press conference with Ron Paul, Ralph Nader described the mainstream media's obsessive coverage of "lipstick-gate" as "demeaning to theAmerican people...to engage in increasing trivial focus on exchanges between candidates or gaffes or slip-ups of one form or another."



And he is, of course, right--we do deserve more substantive coverage of the campaigns, positions, records of the candidates for President of the United States of America--of ALL the candidates. The huge issues of critical importance to the majority of Americans are being ignored on any meaningful level. As I pointed out in my very first post, Obama only seems to care about the lack of substance in debate when he sees it to his advantage.

But I have managed to find something of interest in the coverage of "lipstick-gate," though I admit to having largely taken great pains to avoid having to hear all the "news" about it. The incident triggering this latest supposed "controversy" was a complaint by Obama about how McCain/Palin is co-opting his rhetoric about "hope" and "change." He used an expression involving pigs and lipstick to say that putting a nice face on something ugly doesn't make it nice.

As I hear Obama complaining about this (and the accompanying decrease in his poll numbers), I'm just waiting for somebody to point out that calling Obama's platform and record one of "hope" and "change" doesn't make it so either. The silence on this matter is deafening.

The fact is that for over a year, as Obama talks about "hope" and "change" and presents his as the anti-war candidacy that will distance us from the policies of President George W. Bush's administration, he refuses to commit to pulling out all the troops by the end of his first term, wants to leave over a hundred thousand mercenaries in Iraq, and worsen an already horrible conflict in Afghanistan. Not to mention his having voted to reauthorize the PATRIOT Act, for telecom immunity and to fund the war and, of course, these are all just the tip of the iceberg.

And the fact is that Obama has made it easy to co-opt his supposedly "progressive" rhetoric, because he hasn't been willing to back it up with substance himself. If rhetoric is all you have behind your image of "change"--well, rhetoric is easy to spin for use by anyone.

Since he became the clear victor of his party's nomination, Obama has only moved closer to policies of despair and the status quo. Every four years the Democrats say their candidate has to move further in that direction in order to win, and yet, they keep losing. As Ralph Nader has pointed out time and again, this is a failing strategy. But even as he tastes his own medicine, Obama is stubborn in his refusal to recognize this fact.