A
Vote For Obama Is A
Vote For McCain
By Jerry D. Rose
27 September,
2008
Countercurrents.org
As we get ever closer to the
November election, more and more of my friends who are Obama supporters
are upbraiding me for my support of Cynthia McKinney, on their belief
that a vote for her is a "vote for McCain." Many of them
agree that she or some other third party candidate is a better choice
than either McCain or Obama for President but has no chance of winning,
is not a "viable" candidate, and that I should support Obama
as the decidedly "lesser evil" alternative to McCain.
The purpose of this article is to set this argument on its head and
argue that, in fact, Barack Obama is not "viable," and that
casting one's vote for him denies third party candidates of any opportunity
to defeat the GOP ticket. For purposes of this argument, I am willing
to waive a very substantial doubt that Obama is indeed highly preferable
to McCain as President. Whether Obama or McCain is elected, we will
have no interruption in the bipartisan agenda of American imperialism
with its wars and occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan and perhaps Pakistan
and Iran and who-knows-where; we will have no single payer health
insurance; we will see no diminishment of class and racial inequality
in the country. In the argument of last resort for an Obama presidency,
that he not McCain would be nominating Justices for the next Supreme
Court vacancies, a Democratic majority in the Senate could avert such
a travesty with a McCain presidency as the appointment of Justices
who would complete the process of dismantling Roe v. Wade.
But that's not my argument, really. Let's say hypothetically that,
like McKinney or Nader, Obama would be a MUCH better President from
a progressive perspective. But no matter, the same argument as that
against third party candidates because of their lack viability can,
in my opinion, be applied to the candidacy of Barack Obama.
Why would I argue that Barack Obama is not "electable" as
President? A variety of considerations lead to this conclusion. Perhaps
the smallest of these is the reluctance of principled progressives---pp's
if you will--- (as I consider myself to be, along with most writers
and commentators on Counter Currents) to support a candidate like
Obama with such vacillating or missing positions on key progressive
issues as he pursues a "centrist" campaign along with the
Democratic Leadership Council. We pp's may like to think of ourselves
as the wielders of substantial political power, but the proof of that
in the electoral pudding of votes for progressive national candidates
is seldom to be seen.
A more important consideration is the downright racism in much of
the American electorate; and by racism I mean anti-Muslim as well
as anti-black sentiment. Many "liberal" white Americans---a
key Obama constituency---like to pride themselves on their lack of
racial prejudice by virtue of support for a "black" candidate;
albeit one who banishes frightening "extremists" like Jeremiah
Wright from the charmed circle of his associates. But for every such
white who is comfortable with a "safe" African American
like Obama, there is probably another who is ready to invoke the "black
is a black" prejudice of lumping all blacks into an undifferentiated
category of "dangerous" persons. Progressives may take the
gross over-representation of blacks in America's prisons and on its
welfare rolls and its victims of mortgage foreclosure as indications
of racial discrimination, but these facts simply confirm for racist
whites that blacks are indeed dangerous and irresponsible people,
certainly not the "kind" whom you want to have in the presidency.
There is, then, the sleeper "issue" in this campaign of
anti-Muslim prejudice among Americans of all races, and the way it
will operate against Obama in the election. While the "Obama
is a Muslim" claim has been exposed for the lie it is, the very
fact that it would even be considered a "smear" against
a candidate is indicative of the broad anti-Muslim prejudice in the
American electorate; Obama's very marginal family Muslim connections
and his middle name may turn out to have more impact on his electoral
chances than most of his other liabilities discussed in this article.
Obama himself seemed to realize the toxic effect of this factor as
he moved to remove Muslim Americans from positions of visibility in
his campaign events. His pandering to AIPAC and his ludicrous gaffe
of proclaiming a "unified" Jerusalem to Israel's benefit
may also have been his efforts to disassociate himself from any shreds
of taint of Muslim sympathies. These efforts may be no more successful
with the racist yahoo-dom in the American electorate than than his
efforts to counter anti-black feeling by throwing "extremists"
like Jeremiah Wright under the bus. (The current project of the Zionist
Clarion Fund of putting free copies of the anti-Islam propaganda film
"Obsession" in people's newspapers http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erik-ose/
pro-mccain-group-dumping_b_125969.html in "swing" states
may turn out to be a brilliantly executed "dirty trick"
of the GOP campaign.)
Beyond Obama's vulnerability to anti-black and anti-Muslim sentiments
in the American electorate, he is vulnerable as well because of some
characteristics of his personal political biography: the kind of "skeleton
in the closet" that has been known to derail numerous other American
political careers. I refer to his past political connections in Illinois
politics and the nature of his current campaign financiers, matters
that the Republican "swift boat" crews are sure to exploit
as the campaign proceeds. Ever since Evelyn Pringle's series of articles
http://www.opednews.com/author/author58.html
earlier this year detailing the questionable (at best) association
of Obama with a corrupt political machine in Illinois that has already
netted jail terms for a former Governor and for an Obama fund-raiser,
Tony Rezko, the susceptibility of Obama being drawn into this scandal
has stood like the "donkey in the room," ignored by the
media and even, for the most part, by Obama's political opponents.
The likelihood of Obama being "Spitzerized" by the same
federal "justice" system that forced an overnight conversion
of New York's Governor from a position of power to one of public disgrace
is not entirely remote, given again the well-known proclivity of the
Republican attack machine to exploit such openings. Obama's candidacy
may well be hanging by so tenuous a thread as the forebearance (so
far) of an Illinois grand jury's failure to indict Obama as a conspirator
in the "Rezko case."
Another Obama vulnerability that may become acutely apparent very
quickly was raised by an investigative report http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16601
by Pam Martens that demonstrated the massive contributions of Wall
Street concerns to his campaign coffers. So far this has largely been
papered-over by the Obama campaign by emphasizing the huge collection
of relatively small donations mainly through internet fund-raising
efforts, so that the campaign has maintained its "populist"
image to conceal its elitist base. I look for this campaign maneuver
to blow up as the GOP attack operatives take off their gloves and
begin to publish lists of Obama campaign contributors which contain
some of the most "toxic" names in American public life:
Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers who have
been fingered as some of the "evil forces" that forced the
Wall Street meltdown that is felt on Main Street in the form of an
escalation of home mortgage forceclosures. Just in the last day John
McCain has emerged as the "maverick" Republican who would
rein in Wall Street "special interest," while Obama joins
most Democrats in being the staunchest supporters of the "Bush
bail out" (leading Arianna Huffington to refer contemptuously
to Obama as a "bipartisan musketeer" whose slogan is "one
for all, all for Goldman Sachs.)" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/bailout-bill-obama-needs_b_129374.html)
Of course Democrats can respond to the sure-to-come GOP attacks with
a retort of "you guys (GOP) are (almost) as bad as us, because
you too are supported (almost as much) by the same Wall Street entities
that you now are quick to say you are going to be 'regulating.'"
But Main Street may well be having none of this and millions of people
facing foreclosure on their homes are not going to take well to a
pissing contest between Republican and Democrats about whose monetary
policies are most "responsible" for the crisis and whose
remedies are most likely to be effective. At this point, the jig may
be up for any chance of a "viable" Obama candidacy.
Finally, I will comment on another couple of fatal flaws in the Obama
bid for the presidency. One of these is his selection of Joe Biden
for his Vice-Presidential running mate. Beyond some marginal effect
of countering the "Muslim" image of Obama by having "I
am a Zionist" Biden on his ticket, his nomination does nothing
to add to the ticket's appeal to any important electoral constituency.
In contrast, the much (and deservedly) condemned choice of Sarah Palin
as McCain's running mate was an outstandingly successful move in that
direction. Political analysis has suggested that Bush held on to his
presidency in 2004 largely because a fundamentalist Christian constituency
that largely "sat out" the 2000 election returned with a
vengeance to the GOP fold in 04 as they exploited "wedge"
issues by, for example, having "defense of marriage" (anti-gay)
amendments on the ballots of many "swing" states (like Florida),
bringing out the god, guns and abortion obsessors in record numbers.
By all accounts Palin may do the same for the 08 GOP ticket when,
as I said, Biden does virtually nothing for the Democratic one.
Related to the Obama mis-step on Biden is a lesser-noted but perhaps
ultimately more consequential one. The Obama campaign has continued
and intensified its efforts at campaign fund-raising among wealthy
donors, especially Hollywood-connected ones. Even outside the California
cash-cow for the party, the campaign has found ways to rub their elitist
funding tendencies in the noses of less affluent voters. An article
published last week http://socialistworker.org/2008/09/16/
two-worlds-in-one-city
shows Biden's visit to a $2600 a plate fund-raiser in Holyoke MA that
raised $300,000 for the campaign, with scarcely a perfunctory wave
to folks on the street of a city which is among America's most economically
depressed ones. Multi-million dollar fund-raisers like that hosted
by Barbra Streisand in Hollywood http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/marc_malkin/
b29380_barbra_streisand_in_tune_with_barack.html
raise lots of cash ($9 million from a single Streisand fund-raiser)
for a campaign that is already at record levels of funding, but they
may raise as well the feeling of much of the rest of the country toward
the "Californicators" whose Hollywood is but one of the
manifestations of the "decadent" life styles of West Coast
"liberals." Association with well-privileged persons in
Hollywood and on Wall Street is not helpful to an Obama candidacy,
which has already experienced troubles in blue-collar "swing
states" like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan, all of which were
won by Hillary Clinton in the primaries largely on the basis of working
class resentment against the "life styles of the rich and famous."
Do I sound here like the ghost of Christmas Future showing Ebenezer
Scrooge how his past and present behaviors are "tending"
toward a miserable future should Scrooge not "mend his ways?"
I might take the analogy a step further, saying with that "spirit"
that there may yet be time for Obama remediation. The campaign might
yet pull out a victory if Obama were to do some of the following things.
- declares himself as dedicated to the elimination of a pervasive
level of institutional racial discrimination which he acknowledges
to exist.
- holds a press conference in which he "pre-emptively" raises
the issue of his "Rezko connections," presenting his "side"
of that story before the GOP swift-boaters get out their "seamy"
side of same.
- announces that he is accepting no more campaign contributions and
urges that would-be supporters put their money into helping re-stock
bereft food pantries to feed the hungry or emergency relief for the
construction of affordable housing in New Orleans or for homeowners
hoping to fend off foreclosure. It's called "propaganda of the
deed"... and it works!
Other things of a populist nature could be done, but these give you
the idea of what I am proposing to his campaign and, were they to
be done with sincerity and consistency, I could transfer my own support
to Obama and the Democrats. (I'm a life-long Democrat who has just
"turned" Green). I have little reason to believe that anything
like this will happen. Since Obama's diminishing core of acolytes
will support him whatever he does or doesn't do, he and his supporters
will convince themselves that they can win with milquetoast policy
positions and cluelessness of their candidate's vulnerabilities, and
will lose yet another election as did the supporters of Gore and Kerry.
This being the case, I think all progressives should proceed to find
an alternative to McCain/Palin ticket which isn't that of the ill-fated
Obama/Biden one. With eyes wide open to the vulnerabilities of our
own alternative choices, we must seek out those candidates who are
a "viable" alternative to the much-feared McCain presidency.
And yes, we need to go into the heart of Obamania land and tell our
Kool-aid affected friends that "a vote for Obama is a vote for
McCain."
Jerry D. Rose is retired as a Professor of Sociology
from State University of New York, now lives in Gainesville Florida
where he edits and publishes The Sun State Activist, which contains
a daily digest of news and views of progressive interest from around
the nation and world. He may be contacted at [email protected].
