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Off the Bus: Marc Cooper on What President Obama Means

Marc Cooper — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 01:39:08 +0000

Las Vegas, Nevada - My good friend Micah Sifry framed this historic day perfectly right about noontime. “The hands that picked the cotton are the hands that are picking the next President of the United States.”

Barack Obama’s election tonight is laden with so much significance it seems an impossible task to even attempt any systematic unpacking. But this much is for certain: the full impact of the Oval Office being occupied by a black man has yet to hit home. This single fact alone overshadows every other facet of his campaign and of this election.

Call it a cliché, but it is something I thought I would never see in my lifetime. Some of my friends, as recently as midnight last night, still didn’t believe it possible. But here we are at a moment of national redemption. And it’s a victory that conservatives and liberals, right and left, should claim and celebrate with equal pride.

This is no longer the America of forty or even of twenty-five or as few as ten years ago. Things do change and, sometimes, for the better. Racism, ignorance, bias and prejudice have neither evaporated nor been abolished. But anyone who believes our boiler-plate political discourse emerges intact from this stunning moment needs to be dispatched to the same pasture where John McCain will listlessly spend the rest of political eternity. No longer can it be said that a black child cannot dream of becoming President. No longer can it be said that Americans are but some TV-doped sheeple, easily managed and manipulated by some sort of right-wing media conspiracy. You thought that nothing would ever be the same after 9/11? Well, how about after a black man, his black wife and two black children move into the White House?

It’s unimaginable to yet measure what impact a President Obama will have on the way America is seen around the globe. It will be as confounding for others to think about us the same way they did a year ago as we did about ourselves. And, if I might say, just in the nick of time.

Perhaps History itself demanded that we pass through the pain and humiliation of the Bush era in order to merit the relief granted by this election. We have been forced to suffer through the most vile of administrations, one that has shown total disdain for the constitution, for the rule of law, for basic humanity. And this is the second most important takeaway from the election. After nearly three decades in which the power structure pandered to, exploited, refined and capitalized on all the worst of our collective base instincts, along comes a candidate who speaks only to our most humane and compassionate side. That says something striking about Barack Obama. And says it even more about the American people. One more victory we shouldn’t hesitate to claim.

Third, this is a generational change that makes not only good headlines and easy reporting narratives, but which also serves as a great gift to our children and theirs. The election of Barack Obama liberates a new generation from the now-dreary debates of a self-obsessed Boomer generation – be they wilting flower children or graying warriors of the right. I might be quick in saying so, but Obama’s landslide also effectively buries the most vicious of American political gargoyles – the culture war. If not to Siberia, well then to the wilds of Alaska, have been exiled those who have so cynically divided and polarized us on the bogus issues of Gays, Guns and God. Good riddance.

I make no predictions as to where this tectonic shift will lead us. As McCain himself said recently, “Nothing in American is written.” The future, thankfully, is finally in the hands of a new generation. And at the very moment I write this sentence, I see thousands of young people around me in this ballroom explode in ecstasy as NBC officially projects Obama as the 44th President of the United States. What a moment! I, too, am overcome by emotion as it all seems at once so unreal and yet so well-earned by all of us. I can only compare this to the sensation I felt exactly twenty years ago at 3 am once October morning when Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet lost his own self-engineered plebiscite and was voted out of power. Throngs poured into the street and strangers embraced and cried and danced just as they are here, this very moment, in the Brasilia ballroom of the Rio Hotel.

Just like that night Santiago , no one knew what loomed in the future. It was enough to know, in fact, that once again a future was impossible.

Tonight we know that a black man whose middle name is Hussein has been elected president. The ghosts of Jim Crow and Bull Connors have been exorcised from the most tenebrous shadows of American life.

We know that we have witnessed the collapse of entire political era based on the narrowest and greediest principles of social Darwinism.

We know that Americans resisted and rejected a puerile campaign of fear commenced, at first, by Hillary Clinton and shamelessly escalated by a doddering John McCain.

We know that Americans are capable of repudiating those who would impose upon us a politically illiterate huckster as a vice-presidential candidate.

We know that Americans can no longer tolerate the exercise of torture in the name of freedom.

We know that Americans will soon demand the shut down of Guantanamo.

We know we will no longer suffer the indignity of watching a President unable to speak in public and incapable of understanding and – uninterested in–the world around him.

We know we will have a new President who demonstrates an intelligence, a thoughtfulness and a seriousness that has long been a stranger to the White House.

We know that when asked if we could do it, we answered with a throaty Yes We Can.

And we did.

Off the Bus: Pollsters Underestimate Southern Swing States

Grayson Daughters — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:58:31 +0000

Insider Advantage pollster Matt Towery suggests that, in analyzing likely voting trends, not enough focus has been placed on “the new (southern) swing states.” As a longtime professional pollster, Towery thinks voting results in southern states with large African-American populations and increasing numbers of young first-time registered voters could amount to a sea change in the country’s electoral map.

“There’s a new dynamic out there, ” says Towery. “Georgia, for example, has one of the highest young voter-age population groups in the nation– individuals who are age 18-29. That gives Obama a footing in Georgia that he doesn’t have in Florida, for instance… Also, almost 30 percent of the vote in Georgia is African America, one of the highest percentages in the nation….

“If Obama’s able to carry only 22 percent of the white vote… I’ve been watching it very carefully and chronicling it as well and I’ll have a real story to tell by the end of this campaign.”

(Full disclosure: Matt Towery is a client of mine. –G.D.)

This post originally appeared at Off the Bus.em>

Off the Bus: Marc Cooper on McCain’s Own 60s Radical

Marc Cooper — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:30:29 +0000

The McCain campaign shows no shame in engaging in a tired guilt-by-association tactic as Sarah Palin accuses Obama of “palling around with terrorists.” This desperate calumny derives from Obama once serving on the same non-profit board as former 60’s radical Bill Ayers, one of the founders of the Weather Underground.

But what about McCain’s own associations with former 60’s radicals. Indeed, until just a few years ago, McCain openly boasted not only about his passing friendship but also his deep collaboration with one of the most prominent of Vietnam-era student radicals, David Ifshin. The same David Ifshin who denounced America on Radio Hanoi as McCain sat locked up as a POW.

I met Ifshin about the same time he came into McCain’s life. But under very different circumstances. In 1970, as president of the left-leaning National Student Association, Ifshin traveled to North Vietnam with other anti-war radicals and it was then that he went on Radio Hanoi to denounce his own country’s war effort. That broadcast was piped directly into POW McCain’s cell in the Hanoi Hilton and he was understandably enraged by what he thought was a traitorous act by a fellow American.

I crossed paths with the same David Ifshin a few months later when he showed up in Chile with folksinger Phil Ochs and Yippie leader Jerry Rubin. We spent some days together n Santiago and I can personally attest that while Ifshin never went as far as Ayres did in becoming a literal bomb-thrower, he was very much emblematic of a generation of radical dissidents. Ifshin had risen to notoriety by leading the takeover of his Syracuse university campus. He opened up his NSA offices to radicals trying to shut down Washington DC with streets protests in May 1971. Just after their sojourn in Chile, Ifshin and Ochs went on to Uruguay, joined a local university takeover and were arrested and deported.

As the years passed, Ifshin—just like Ayers—eventually moved into the American political mainstream. Ayers came out of the underground, took up education as a profession and staked himself out on the non-violent political left. Ifshin moved more quickly to the center and eventually became General Counsel to the Bill Clinton campaign as well as a prominent leader in pro-Israeli causes. But until the day he died, at age 47 in 1996, Ifshin never renounced nor apologized for his youthful, radical past.

In the meantime, and much to his credit, Senator John McCain forged a close personal friendship with Ifshin, as well as a working political alliance. Together they worked to establish the Institute for Democracy in Vietnam and partnered up on the issue of normalization of relations with Vietnam.

As recently as two years ago, speaking at Columbia College, McCain affectionately and warmly recalled his relationship with Ifshin saying:

“We worked together in an organization dedicated to promoting human rights in the country where he and I had once come for different reasons. I came to admire him for his generosity, his passion for his ideals, for the largeness of his heart, and I realized he had not been my enemy, but my countryman . . . my countryman …and later my friend. His friendship honored me. We disagreed over much. Our politics were often opposed, and we argued those disagreements. But we worked together for our shared ideals.”

That John McCain is unrecognizable from the man who today stands behind the scurrilous attacks suggesting that Barack Obama pals around with terrorists because Bill Ayres—when Obama was literally eight years old—stupidly fancied himself an armed revolutionary.

The old John McCain was able to overcome his own repulsion against a young man who went on the radio station of the enemy who was holding and torturing him and built a warm friendship with him. If Obama were to run commercials today criticizing McCain for hanging out with the Tokyo Rose of the Vietnam era, it would be nearly as execrable as the McCain campaign’s current smears around Bill Ayres.

This article was originally published in Off the Bus at the Huffington Post

Off the Bus: Eric Morse Dishes Advice to Obama for Tonight

Eric Morse — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:00:31 +0000

With one presidential and one vice presidential debate behind us, a pattern is emerging: each time, the Democratic candidate has come to the table armed with facts and policy proposals, while the Republican catered to pundits and the public with an amalgam of attitude and atmospherics, colloquialisms and avoidance-by-way-of-personal-anecdote.

And in tomorrow’s town hall meeting in Nashville, John McCain will be on his home turf. McCain’s been described as the “master of the town hall,” and Nashville may present his last, best hope of wresting the momentum from Barack Obama. Rest assured, he’ll be in fighting form.

Obama, who has been criticized by opponents for being “aloof” and “professorial,” may have his work cut out for him. But his laid-back, unflappable demeanor and his down-to-earth lifestyle create an excellent opportunity to connect with the voters in the room and those watching on television. Here’s what he needs to do to capitalize:

• Keep it short. Like Al Gore and John Kerry, Barack Obama is a victim of the Progressive’s love of policy nuance. The Harvard lawyer may love building and presenting a case, but he’ll be speaking to “ordinary Americans”—likely white, working class, and skewing older. He’ll need to keep his responses short, pithy and punchy. This is no secret, and he’s pulled it off plenty of times, so there’s no need to worry; but he’ll have to keep it in mind the whole time. Even one belabored answer risks losing the audience for good.

• Make eye contact. And not just with those in the room. Obama should split his time between speaking to the crowd and directly to the camera. In the Vice Presidential debate on Thursday, we all witnessed the contrast between Sarah Palin’s eyes staring through the screen and Joe Biden’s, cast downward as he addressed moderator Gwen Ifill. Obama will be wise to remember that the people he needs to win over are on the other side of the camera.

• Get a move on. We’ve all seen Obama in town hall meetings, half-sitting, allowing his comfort with the constituents to create a relaxed, personal atmosphere. Even seated, his presence still commands attention. But this doesn’t translate as well on camera. By contrast, John McCain is a mover. He prowls the stage, cracking jokes and addressing his “friends.” In the context of the emerging campaign narrative, this contrast can serve Obama well – Obama the cool hand versus the jumpy and erratic McCain—but he must be careful not to cede control of the room. Obama has an advantage standing next to the shorter, stooped McCain, and as he walks with his languid stride, even stepping into the audience to connect with questioners, he can remain the singular focus for the entire 90 minutes.

• Yes, words matter. Obama often uses clinical language, referring to “the middle class.” In more populist moments, he opts for “folks.” But in informal town halls, he must go a step further, into the second person. I’d like to see him directly address a questioner, or even the television audience, with “you.” I’d like to see him ask a follow-up question of those in the audience, put full names to anecdotal characters, even tell stories that extend beyond the campaign trail, into his personal life. The majority of undecided voters are not bigots or cynics—they’re just waiting for him to invite them in.

Obama has every advantage a candidate could ask for, and Tuesday night may be his opportunity, not just to extend his lead in the polls, but to upset the undisputed champion of the town hall meeting.

This was originally posted on Off the Bus at Huffington Post.