Obama takes on McCain's jabs about Ayers

copyright © 2008 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

Last evening Mister Gregory had a chance to speak to Mister Fairbanks of the issue.  "Who is Barack Obama?" Barry thought he might introduce the topic delicately.  The two men were in a car together.  They had traveled across the country to meet with school Principals, Superintendents, and other professional educators.  The hour was late, and dinner was on the agenda.

As the gents drove to the restaurant, Barry began the conversation; "Just as Barack Obama might not have known Bill Ayers background, who would think someone in this car was a member of SDS, Students for a Democratic Society?" Sean smiled and quickly replied, "I would." He then revealed that he was in fact a member of the largest and most influential radical student organization of the 1960s.  The devout Republican, a man who might represent the Corporate Class belonged to an organization, which was "initially concerned with equality, economic justice, peace, and participatory democracy." Sean recounted stories.  He told tales of his participation in anti-war protests.  Mister Fairbanks helped to close his college.  Sean showed "determined resistance," he was a radical, a rebel.  He could be considered a less visible, and less violent, Bill Ayers.

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November 08 is not a caucus. Everyone can vote. Those who can't get to a polling place can vote absentee. Obama's red states will go red, his "Dems for a Day" will go back to their real preferences. Even if some of them were sincere, Inds and GOP won't like the Wright tapes they will be hearing for months on their car radios.

Not everyone in the DNC or the SDs has drunk the koolaid, and even some who are rigging things now for Obama (Pelosi etc) may still have a little survival instinct about November and pull back to sanity eventually.

Soon it's going to become obvious to the insiders (including Obama) that Obama CAN'T BEAT MCCAIN. Then there may be some little core of SDs and DNC palace intriguers who would for some reason rather lose in Nov than switch to Hillary, but I can't imagine that being very many. (How many netkooks and Nader types are actually Superdelegates?) Remember, the official SD vote doesn't happen till August.

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Given Jerome Armstrong's recent post "Pennsylvania Forward", and its stated belief that an Obama lead in pleadged delegates is in effect a technicality. I thought I would present what I and a growing number of Obama supporters feel would be the outcome of overturning an Obama lead in elected delegates-- permanent minority party status. Quite simply, the one bedrock demographic of the modern Democratic Party is the African-American vote, they were the voting bloc that never waivered during Reagan (unlike blue collar dems), that never bought into the Bush fearmongering  (unlike Suburban women) that stuck with us through thick and thin voting at with us at 80-90% clip, establishing a effective alternative political machine (the African American Churches) and gave us a bedrock upon which we can work to build a party.

After all this, the thought that we would metaphorically, ask the first viable African American presidential canidate to go to the back of the bus (give up the nomination with a lead in pledged delegates- make no mistake this is how this will be interpeted), is astonishing in its gall and unbelievable in its shortsightedness. I'm not going to mince words, if Barack Obama is seen as being robbed of the nomination, the Democratic Party as we know it will be destroyed-- we will become a permanent minority, as African-American voters either sit out, or quite possibly this year cast protest votes for Mckinney.

This is not hyperbole, this is the simple truth: a major decrease in African American participation would cost us Mizzou, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and quite possibly New York.  

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