I’ve been away for several weeks driving around America in a gasoline powered ve-hicle. I’ve seen things.
This I know: While nobody knows how this presidential campaign will play out it is an absolute certainty that like in 1968, the Empire will be shaken to its core.
W. and crew have taken the GOP so far out on a dead limb that they’ve nominated a candidate who they despise. Hillary, having given the okeydoke to “blue collar America” has smashed the LBJ coalition.
Meanwhile that unsinkable ship, the “USS Sole Superpower,” has sunk. A shocked and addled populace drifts on the waves, clinging to its habits and prejudices while sharks circle the wreckage. They face a stark choice: they can swim towards the small island on the horizon (which may not even have any food or water) called “Obama,” or they can stay put and hope to be rescued before the sharks decide to strike.
(Metaphor switch!) Obama, the Mohammed Ali of politics (see? Americans can embrace a Muslim champ) has, against all odds, defeated the hardest hitter around to take the Democratic Title. The Clintons, like George Foreman, foresaw an early knockout, but Obama employed a “rope-a-dope” strategy. He’s taken some thundering shots to the head and body, which is worrisome, and the tireless GOP waits in the wings like Joe Frazier. The ensuing fight won’t be pretty. Furthermore, unlike Ali, Obama didn’t get a knockout. He won on points in a controversial split decision.
Obama will not use the rope-a-dope on McCain. He’ll float like a butterfly and sting like a bee, stick and jab. To win he must fight his fight and bring it.
The greatest obstacle to this would be a Hillary vice-presidency. The Republicans have a warehouse full of ammunition on the Clintons, sitting unused. Obama would be caught flat footed, spending the entire campaign explaining what the Clintons really meant by this or that. You know the drill.
I know for a fact that Republicans are desperately praying (literally) for an Obama-Clinton ticket. For all of their bluster, GOPs know this: Their candidate might win out only if Obama picks Hillary. They know that McCain is no Joe Frazier. No, he is a Scott LeDeaux, a paper tiger with a glass jaw. A Great White Hope, if you will, though even a LeDeaux could land a lucky punch if he catches the Champ flat footed.
So will “blue collar America” ever vote for Obama? (Metaphor switching back!) As we bob on the ocean, surrounded by sharks, something new develops. Amongst the run-of-the-mill sharks, up swims a ravenous 40-foot Great White named “War on Iran!” Maybe, just maybe, America will decide to swim for that island.
These are the (legal) things Marion Kind has done for money: cabbage picker, office clerk, landscaper, ice cream man, injection molder, forklift driver, film and stage actor, drycleaner, comic book artist, truck driver, dishwasher, fanzine putter-outer, bartender, housepainter, singer, UAW shop steward, warehouse and packaging person, courier, waiter, guinea pig, illustrator, poet, writer, fashion model, five instrument recording artist, assembler, construction, cabbie. Not saying he did them well, only that he got paid.