Democrats befuddled by the real world

This week the Democratic Party is meeting in Denver with the usual expectation that its candidates for president and vice president will get a boost, if not a bounce, in public opinion. In that party’s case, the need for one or both of these consequences is critical, for their standard-bearer’s serious deficiencies and the gravity of the world situation are conspiring to produce an electoral disaster.

This incredibly long quest in both political parties for the nation’s highest office has always had the scary possibility of buyers’ remorse, and Barack Obama bodes ill in that regard. Of course, the assembled delegates are not going to throw him overboard, but more than a few of them have thought about it pretty seriously.

There is first the matter of Obama’s closest associates over the years, beginning with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the Illinois Senator’s pastor for 20 years at Trinity Congregational Church in Chicago. Everyone is entitled to his opinion, even someone like Wright, who doubtless believes that anyone who disagrees with him is a racist. But “Goddamn the USA,” “America had it coming” before 9/11, and the “U.S. of KKK” clearly cross the line from civil discourse to outright slander.

Those remarks having allegedly been “taken out of context,” Wright appeared before meetings of the National Press Club and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People but did not withdraw and certainly did not apologize for any of the incendiary remarks. He insulted astonished journalists and flattered like-minded blacks with equal aplomb.

Then there is his long-time associate William Ayers, unrepentant former member of the Weather Underground, violent offshoot of the leftist Students for a Democratic Society, who not only bombed military and police facilities during Vietnam War days, but declared that he should have done more than he did.

Finally, Obama’s rise and continued trajectory in Illinois and national politics have been fueled by his long involvement with the corrupt Chicago political machine, which enabled him to push his state senate opponents off the ballot and to purchase property he could not afford.
Defenders of Obama say it is a distraction to bring up his friends, as if that were the only thing disqualifying him from being president.

Republicans bring these things up primarily because of Obama’s carefully calculated messianic appeal to his emotional and uncritical followers. This is nothing more than pointing out that the anointed one has feet of clay.

Even if the Democratic nominee did not have all this baggage, his policy positions are enough to sink him. He is a just another big-spending, high-taxing, government-meddling, abortion-facilitating, enemy-appeasing, defense-cutting liberal Democrat. The reason for the soaring rhetoric and the cult of personality is simply to distract voters from these unwelcome facts.

The crisis in Georgia is the Democrats’ worst nightmare. Ever since the end of the Cold War they have indulged the fantasy that foreign affairs and defense can be relegated to a status inferior to their unending commitment to an American welfare state. Sure, President Clinton felt compelled to intervene in the Balkans and to call for regime change in Iraq, but those necessities and/or political triangulations are the price to be paid for continuance in office. It is entirely possible that, if Obama is elected, he may do the same. But his party base wants none of that kind of talk now.

Obama’s clueless response to the Russian invasion of George should have set off alarm bells in any sensible Democrat, assuming they have the freedom to say what they think. There was no misunderstanding as Obama implied between the invading nation and its vulnerable victim. But that’s what politicians having a difficult time coping with harsh realities are driven to say.

Obama got the nomination by running to the left, of all people, of Sen. Hillary Clinton. Remember that she voted to authorize Bush to invade Iraq while Obama made it clear that he was opposed. When she ultimately reconciled herself to his successful flanking movement and appealed to the old Reagan Democrats, Clinton not only swept to victory in electoral-vote rich Ohio and Pennsylvania, but obliterated him in the southern states of Kentucky and West Virginia.

Unfortunately for the Democrats, there is no way out of their dilemma, and they are stuck with this questionable, pretentious, inexperienced and weak candidate. Republicans will surely make the most of this situation, even if it is a tragedy that a major political party should be taken over by political lunatics. Fortunately for the country, the case for John McCain and against Barack Obama is getting stronger by the day.

ABOUT THE WRITER
Richard Reeb taught political science, philosophy and journalism at Barstow College from 1970 to 2003. He is the author of “ Taking Journalism Seriously: ‘Objectivity’ as a Partisan Cause” (University Press of America, 1999). He can be contacted at rhreeb@verizon.net.