Some of Nothing

Reason to Hope
Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Obama's Pennsylvania speech last night reminded me of one of his better qualities--he can be taught. First, he dutifully acknowledged Clinton's win: "I want to thank all of you who are here tonight, but I want to start tonight by congratulating Senator Clinton on her victory this evening...". He essentially 'fessed up to running a lame campaign lately:

After 14 long months, it's easy to forget — after 14 long months, it's easy to forget what this campaign's about from time to time, to lose sight of the fierce urgency of this moment.

It's easy to get caught up in the distractions and the silliness and the tit-for-tat that consumes our politics, the bickering that none of us are entirely immune to, and it trivializes the profound issues: two wars, an economy in recession, a planet in peril, issues that confront our nation.

That kind of politics is not why we are here tonight. It's not why I'm here, and it's not why you're here.

And then, he immediately turned on McCain:

We already know what we're getting out of the other party's nominee. John McCain has offered this country a lifetime of service, and we respect that. But what he's not offering is any meaningful change from the policies of George W. Bush.

John McCain believes that George Bush's Iraq policy is a success, so he's offering four more years of a war with no exit strategy, a war that's sending our troops on their third tour, and their fourth tour, and their fifth tour of duty, a war that's cost us billions of dollars and thousands of lives, thousands more grievously injured, a war that has not made us more safe, but has distracted us from the task at hand in Afghanistan ... a war that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged.

John McCain said that — John McCain said that George Bush's economic policies have led to, and I quote, 'great progress' over the last seven years. And so he's promising four more years of tax cuts for CEOs and corporations who didn't need them and weren't asking for them, tax cuts that he once voted against because he said they offended his conscience.

Well, they may have stopped offending John McCain's conscience somewhere along the road to the White House, but George Bush's economic policies still offend my conscience, and they still offend yours.

That's exactly what he's needed to do for a while now. Bring on the change!

Plus, to make matters even more hopeful, the New York Times editorial board has started making sense:

The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it.

Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.

Maybe, next, the NYT will set its sights on the vacuously mean columns of Maureen Dowd and Gail Collins. We can only hope.


UPDATE: Melissa McEwan at Shakesville makes the case for mean, vacuous, desperate pandering. Takes all kinds, I guess.

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Nothing New byslag at 7:28 AM