Open Letter to Sen. Barack Obama

September 19, 2008 · Posted in Barack Obama, Election 2008 

Dear Senator Obama,

Since January of this year, I’ve been absolutely committed to getting you elected. I’ve donated to your campaign, I’ve canvassed for you, I’ve volunteered to work in the office around the corner, and I’ve even put my marriage into severe stress by refusing to sit idly by and once again allow my Republican spouse to cancel out my vote.

But I need your help. And I need it now.

I knew it was going to be a rough campaign. I even suspected that Sarah Palin would be the choice for their ticket after seeing her profiled earlier this year. Why didn’t you?

I also suspected that the Republicans would use every single weapon at their disposal, including the financial markets, race, war, and terrorism (their little deck of fear) to intimidate voters into electing them.

But I believed you when you called upon us to be the New American Majority. This is what I wrote in February:

We are the new American majority. We have a voice. We walk streets, we make phone calls, we give what we can, even if it’s just $3.01 at a time. We are speaking for ourselves rather than waiting for someone to speak for us. We want our country back, and we want our standing back in the world. We’re tired of the naysayers who leave our fates in the hands of Wall Street and the Halliburtons, Diebolds and Blackwaters of the world. We are no longer going to stand idly by and have our lives and quality of our lives dictated to us by lobbyists and corporations.

This is not hate. It is democracy.

But Senator Obama, we can’t do this by ourselves. When Bill Clinton gives an interview praising Sarah Palin’s political acumen and you fall silent, what am I to think? When Hillary Clinton won’t come out with both guns blazing against her, I can only assume that your choice of Joe Biden so offended them that they plan now to toss the election over to McCain — their Plan B.

The fierce urgency of NOW isn’t just a phrase to inspire voters, Senator Obama. You have to get it, too.

This week has just about snuffed out the hope. That’s what McCain and the Republicans want. They want us to be afraid, to believe in nothing, to be emotionally and financially bankrupt, bent and spent, looking up and reaching up for them to rescue us.

We don’t need rescuing; we need your voice. We need you to get down on their level, to tell the voters the truth just like you said you would. Tell them that Sarah Palin is no more qualified to succeed McCain as President as she is to be dogcatcher. Ask them if they want Vice President Palin to be in contempt of Congress the same way Vice President Cheney is now. Point it out, shout it out! Ask the voters if they really think it’s a good idea to surrender to snark.

Did you learn nothing from the primaries? Hillary Clinton won by snarking her way right past you. And now she and Bill are handing a victory to McCain by signalling permission to their supporters. What Bill Clinton said in that interview was that Sarah Palin was competent because she could play politics.

I’ve seen Sarah Palins in my lifetime. They’re the cheerleaders that steal boyfriends because they can, the antagonists that walk into healthy groups and leave them shattered and broken with their backbiting and gossip, the women who stand up and preen their righteousness while their kids flip them off behind their backs. They’re the ‘beautiful ones’, the ones with enough bite to keep honesty at bay, just enough brains to convince everyone they’re right, and two-faced enough to tell everyone else you’re wrong. (For even more examples, read this)

Sarah Palin is dangerous. Until you neutralize her, you risk losing this election. And it must be YOU. Not Biden. Not Clinton. Not Michelle. YOU.

You are the one who has to call her what she is. Ambitious and incompetent. You are the one who has to point it out, and once you do, then you can call McCain out for taking such a dangerous risk with our country. Did you hear her yesterday, calling it the Palin-McCain administration? Where were YOU? Why weren’t you on it?

You have said you are running on change. As Steve said on NewsGang yesterday, the only thing that has changed since the convention is the selection of Sarah Palin. As the change candidate, it’s up to you to address the change, take it out, neutralize it.

Because as much as I want to be all hopey and stuff, after this week I’m as pessimistic as I’ve ever been. People will surrender hope to fear. They do it all the time. It’s a crisis of courage. And I guarantee you that if you don’t stand up and lead the way on this, they will falter. If they falter, you will fail. And if you fail, we will not have a country left to stand for. We will be a burned-out husk of our former glory, owned by China, loathed by all, and quite possibly vulnerable to far, far worse than we’ve seen so far.

Do you want to win? Do you want the opportunity to actually do what you’ve said you’ll do? Do you want my support?

Stop with the wonkitude and stand up to Palin. She’s your threat. Not McCain. She’s who they want in office, not McCain.

Just. do it. Now. Because there is an urgency to now. Because we need you to show us that you can lead, and that you can push our enemies out of the way to do it.

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Comments

  • Wow, this seems like a post from a time machine date-stamped about a week ago. Obama has been slamming McCain without mercy in his ads and on the stump. And it's working. Palin is tanking in the polls. A meteoric fall that has no recent precedent. The last thing Obama should have done was to allow himself to become the issue by directly criticizing her. All that would have done is suckered Obama into the GOP trap of feigned outrage that she's a victim of sexism. We saw that with "lipstick on a pig", which was obviously contrived. Obama didn't need to say a thing. Palin imploded on her own, beginning with the Gibson interview. Meanwhile, others are doing the job just fine. I think Tina Fey was a turning point in Palin-mania. Read NRO/The Corner - they're ballistic that now McCain-Palin are widely accepted by the traditional media as a couple of pathological liars. They're right.

    Besides, it would be a mistake for the top of the ticket to attack the bottom of the other ticket. That's Biden's job. And the other surrogates. And it's the job of the media to report on who she is and what she stands for, and they've done a pretty good job.

    Obama has a 50-44 lead in Gallup and 50-42 in Research 2000 today. As 538 noted yesterday, this kind of turnaround post convention by Obama exposes the McCain-Palin bump as very ephemeral, and its got to be very troubling for the GOP.

    He knows what he's doing. Folks always say to do more of this and less of that, but he always rises to the occasion. He won the primaries, and he did it the right way. He didn't go for the jugular against Hillary. He essentially let her win several primaries late because he knew he had enough delegates and, thinking long-term, he knew he'd need to win back Hillary's supporters back into his camp. If he had divisively gone for the jugular then, he'd be in much worse shape now.

    Some said Invesco was a huge mistake, and he was tremendous. Some said giving a night to Michelle was mistake - they should have used the night to hit McCain. But now she's incredibly popular and a huge asset to the campaign, and virtually untouchable by the GOP.

    Nobody said it would be easy, and it will take a lot of hard work every day between now and election day, but he is following a smart strategy. One thing he is doing now that he did in the primaries is allow his opponent to hang himself/herself. Rope a dope. It's worked. People complained he wasn't exploiting "nation of whiners" but he saved it for the right time - his acceptance speech.
  • For the better part of two weeks I've been able to ignore those who contended that he needed to go after Palin. Two things this week changed that. Bill Clinton's incredible interview where he did everything but endorse Palin, and two conversations. One with my not-entrenched-not-convinced spouse, and one with my oldest friend. The spouse thinks Palin is unqualified and a terrible choice, but not bad enough to turn away from McCain. Frankly, I'm not sure what IS bad enough to turn away from McCain if this week didn't convince him. The oldest friend said to me, "I wasn't going to vote for McCain, and then I heard Palin. She convinced me."

    This is someone who leans indie but definitely buys into the culture war. When I hear McCain snark on the trail my head goes back to the traction Clinton got with the same tactic over and over and over again.

    I don't believe Obama can continue to ignore Palin. Even if it means drawing attention to what Biden says about her, he has to point her out and call her the elephant in the room that she is.

    Polls are capricious. Even though he's up overall right now, there are still some swing states in play that matter. We all know that there are efforts at voter disenfranchisement and the old standard ballot-box hijackings that seem to go with Republicans, so he needs a very large margin to overcome every negative.
  • Biden is a perfect politician - experienced, intelligent, wise. But that's it. When Palin came to stage, and "PalinMania" started, Biden became invisible. So rumors claim, that Biden will officially "resign because of health problems", and Obama will invite Hillary to join his fight against Palin. Because she, and no longer McCain, is Obama's biggest problem now.
    On the other hand, Obama's supporters don't like Hillary, and Obama himself does not like to be "the second", which is OK for McCain, as Palin now seems like presidential candidate, not McCain himself -http://www.votetheday.com/polls/obama-is-dumping-biden-269
  • Ursula
    I don't agree with this. But I support you anyways. I hardly know anyone who is thinking about Hillary right now. They are thinking about their wallets and they are questioning John McCain.

    Energy goes where attention flows.
  • I want you to be right. The attention still flows to Palin. She's meeting with Karzai next week -- a meeting that should be hammered upon by Obama, Biden, and every other surrogate out there. Karzai is a shill installed by the Bush admin, and trying to paint a meeting between the two as evidence of her readiness to be President is the most cynical, bogus PR move I've ever seen.

    I hope you are right. But I'm telling you, she's a trojan horse that needs to be taken care of before she explodes in October.
  • I know from where you speak, but I don't think that's the right prescription.

    The more Obama goes after Palin, the more he invites comparisons to her instead of McCain. Going after Palin doesn't make Obama appear 'presidential,' because it just invites comparisons between the two.

    You are suggesting a strategy that plays to those already in his choir. Those who are undecided have a different perspective, and really don't see a great deal of difference in the experience level of either. Neither Palin nor Obama has finished a term on a federal or state level. Neither has significant experience. Neither has ever run for re-election. Obama himself has never been in a serious race against a Republican at any level of his career (he came from a district where getting the Democratic nod was a fait accompli.)

    Inviting those comparisons just plays into McCain's hand, anyway you look at it. He gets to skirt across the top of the waves, and doesn't even have to engage or acknowledge Joe Biden.

    The issue Obama needs to strike will require the nuance that he is so acclaimed for possessing. After Obama's pounding a message of 'change' for so long, the Republicans have found a counter: 'reform." Again, you have to look at this from the eyes of an independent, even the fiscal conservatives who felt betrayed by Bush. 'Change' is a great mantra, and the left has taken it to mean "regime change." However, the 'reform' message is one that resonates very deeply, getting rid of Politics As Usual. And the independents who examine records will find in McCain a candidate who is far more likely to rankle his own when he thinks he's right, one who does not toe his own party's line, and one who has been praised historically by Democrats for being someone who put partisanship aside to get things accomplished.

    Again... view this through your independent lenses. And figure out how Obama can re-frame the debate. Maybe is means Obama comes out swinging against some in his own party. Maybe he blasts Pelosi for playing games and not following up on her promises. Maybe he blasts her for letting ethical lapses (like Jefferson's icy $100K) slip by, for putting her party ahead of the country. Heck, the Congressional approval rating is in the single digits -- Obama couldn't help but gain by running against them.

    Then Obama can build some actual 'Maverick' cred, instantly neutralizing 'reform' as an issue. Trying to paint McCain as Bush-3 won't cut it with independents, because there are too many years of issues and quotes to refute it. (The 88% thing won't hold up as a talking point, because there are too many non-partisan issues that skew those numbers -- even the most partisan opponent agrees on non-binding resolutions and the like. And I suspect a large chunk of the Bush disapproval numbers has more to do with his ineptness and failure to execute, not disagreement on policy.)

    There are more fascinating dynamics at play in this election than I remember in a long time. But sending Obama after Palin isn't a winning formula.
  • I disagree, of course, and ironically, that comes from conversations I've had with independents. (See my reply to roadkillrefugee below).

    With that said, I'm willing to be wrong. I WANT to be wrong. I want this election to go to Obama. But I am seeing some swings in the downticket races that are concerning, and leave me wondering about whether the national polls are really accurate.
  • Good one, Karoli.
  • Excellent and to the point letter. And necessary. I hope it gets his full attention.

    Since the day after the DNC ended, all I hear, all I see, all I read, is Sarah Palin. It's all about her, her cuteness, her personality, her incessantly repeated phrases. She is front and center with the media, and by virtue thereof, with us voters. The issues (except for, recently, certain aspects of the economy) have taken a back seat. We need Barack Obama to get back in the driver's seat in this election.
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