Descend into the Maelstrom

Regardless of your political sentiments, all can agree that the nation is going through a rough stretch right now.

Back to back to back storms are hovering around and battering the Gulf coast and Atlantic seaboard- a taste of what’s to come under earth’s new climate change regime. America’s oldest Wall Street investment banks and largest mortgage lenders are going bankrupt or getting bought out with Uncle Sam’s help. A massive global insurance giant nearly folded. Most people are worse off than they were 8 years ago. Russia has asserted its newfound energy dominance over a hapless Georgia, openly daring the European Union or America to do anything to protect our allies in the former Soviet bloc. We are engaged in deadly battles in the Middle East as well as South Asia, fighting all kinds of nasty people, including minority elements of Sunnis, Shiites, and Pashtuns. The nation continues to fiend for oil from the OPEC cabal that controls it. 7 years after 9/11, the people who masterminded the largest murder in American history are still wanted, dead or alive, a standing embarrassment to our national security, intelligence, and law enforcement apparatuses. Less in the news, our neighbor to the South, Mexico, is turning into an uncontrollable cauldron of cowboy drug dealers who would make the Wild Bunch look like so many Swedish nannies on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a country so lawless that today’s governors, mayors, and cops are tomorrow’s lunch.

In this environment, some people are additionally terrorized by the specter of an Obama loss on November 2nd. I remain extremely confident about an Obama victory, to a level probably unmatched except perhaps by Obama’s legendarily cocky team itself. That is, save a massive Obama gaffe or the revelation that he is having an affair. I wouldn’t bet on either. Here are the reasons why Obama will win.

Forget the National Polls. There is a lot of hand-wringing over the national polls, where the McCain-Palin ticket has made legitimate and dramatic strides among various demographics, especially white women and the Republican base. People seem to forget that national polls mean ZERO in an electoral college system. The only numbers that matter on election day are in the handful of swing states, which generally hovers around 16. Ohio, Florida, Nevada, Michigan, Pennyslvania, and some of the other usual suspects. The remainder of states are going to be in the tank for one candidate or the other, regardless of what either campaign likes to claim. So although McCain is either tied with or ahead of Obama in just about every national poll, they are meaningless. Don’t waste your time on them, and instead focus on the swing states polls if you must get a poll fix.

State Polls will also be off. If you do, remember that these state polls will not be accurate either. Polls do not call people like me, who own cell phones but not a land line at home. Which is a large percentage of likely voters between 18 and 30, who will swing for Obama overwhelmingly in this cycle, and in record numbers in the history of youth voting. Add this to the unprecedented 50-state voter registration drive being carried out by the Democrats, and we will see some unexpected results on November 2nd compared to previous polling.

Obama’s Ground Organization. What’s the difference between a small-town mayor and a community organizer? The community organizer knows how to get out the vote in urban areas across the nation with a vengeance. America’s favorite community organizer in particular will bring out a record number of Democrats, and specifically minorities and young people without land lines, on election day. Much of this will be the courtesy of the most powerful political tools ever created on the World Wide Web, which Obama gets and McCain still does not. At this time it is impossible to accurately quantify this effect. Of course, the Republicans will be working very hard to recruit new voters as well, but this effort will fall far short. There is simply less energy on their side this year.

Sense of Urgency. As the election gets closer, if the polls remain neck and neck, we will see one presidential candidate get flustered, angry, and desperate. The other one will remain cool. Could it possibly be because one of them is 47 and will have at least four more opportunities to run for president, while the other is getting his very last shot at age 72?

Being Black No Longer Matters. Martin Luther King, Jr. yearned for a day when a human could be judged by the content of his character rather than the color of his skin. I have been studying America very closely since I was a kid, and was more able to watch it change over time than most because I was constantly going abroad and returning. I’m also an American minority who can see America through an outsider’s lens. America has finally arrived there sooner than we could ever have dreamed just 4 years ago. 2008 represents the first time in history where race is finally marginalized enough that it will not affect a presidential race with a minority candidate. Of course, no polls will accurately reflect this fact, because people are not willing to admit that race was a factor in their vote. But any racial effect on white voters will easily be cancelled by McCain’s age factor, which 30% of voters take issue with. Let’s also be honest: most whites who would vote on race are Republicans anyway. And for good reasons or bad, 90% of blacks will vote for Obama.

The News is Good News. Most of the bad news, whether it’s related to markets, American soldier deaths, or personal finance numbers will reflect badly on the Bush administration and its battered party which is largely to blame. The Republican party is on the wrong side of most Americans when it comes to nearly every crisis of the day, and Obama is effectively selling the party’s governing incompetence. Sarah Palin was a breath of fresh air for this group, exuding confidence and a break from the “old-boy” Republican network. However:

The Sarah Palin Stock will Fall. Again, pundits do not give the American electorate enough credit. The more that voters learn about Sarah Palin, the less a lot of her early supporters will back off from her. Do we want another Dick Cheney in power- a Vice President who governs in order to help her cronies, lies with a straight face, doesn’t believe in evolution or that global warming is man-made, believes that the Iraq War is a task from God, and would reinforce McCain’s itchy trigger finger? Who looked into banning books from a library, who has instructed government employees not to respond to a subpoena investigating her although she claims to have “nothing to hide?”

It’s Debatable. There will be unprecedented interest in the presidential debates this year; I predict that viewership records will easily be broken on live TV, followed by the second wave of viewings over the Internet. In my opinion, this is likely to be where most of the swing toward Obama will occur. Before our eyes, Obama has grown up from a bumbling lightweight in early 2007 who could not separate himself from talk of identity politics, to America’s most effective speaker, debater, and politician over the last 18 months. His raw intelligence will ooze. McCain meanwhile hasn’t really changed: he is still the same crabby, uninformed man who is trying to change his platform to “change” at the last minute, ditching “experience.” He is trying to play the game on Obama’s chessboard. However, to do so, one must actually have policies of change in mind, without alienating the right wing who still adores the Bush wing of the party. The Sarah gambit was supposed to help, but she must face Joe Biden. I like grandpa Joe’s chances in this one.

If you’re not as relaxed about all this as I am, there’s nothing more I can do for you. I suggest if you’re a big Obama fan, and you’re still worried, why not go ahead and donate to his campaign, make some calls, or knock on some doors to help out in the next 50 days to make yourself feel better? In the meanwhile, I’m going to start planning a massive victory party in New York City for November 3rd, and YOU my friend are invited. And: don’t forget to vote.

Sarah Palin’s selection by McCain to be his running mate says volumes about McCain and his leadership style.  It was the biggest decision of his presidential campaign, and he clearly decided to go for broke with a high-risk, high-reward bet.  It’s no coincidence that McCain has a gambling problem in his personal life.  The decision was reckless and cynical in numerous ways, and immediately makes apparent that John McCain is completely unfit to lead the nation.  It’s not exaggeration to say that McCain has placed the country that he loves so much in grave peril.  The Sarah Palin pick is strictly aimed at helping him win an election rather than help him govern.  Do you honestly think that a President McCain would ever call up Palin on the phone if Russia invades Ukraine? “Um, Sarah…this terrible thing happened…what’s your advice on how we should proceed…uh, no, we can’t challenge Russia to a hockey puck shoot-out to settle this one…“  She is unprepared to govern, and yet she might be called upon to do so if anything were to happen to McCain.

I’ve seen Palin speak three times: at the announcement of her selection on the day after the DNC; her nasty and untruthful speech at the RNC; and her sloppy first interview as running mate with Charlie Gibson of ABC News.  In all three cases I was impressed by her poise, her speaking skills, and her aw-shucks all-American demeanor.  I was equally flabbergasted by her ability to lie with a straight face, her complete ignorance of important issues, and her willingness to make vicious and false attacks against Obama and his record.

Palin has Zero (0) foreign policy credentials.  She did not know what the Bush Doctrine was.  She thinks that being in charge of an oil-producing state counts as national security experience.  She believes that the fact that you can see Russia across the Bering Strait from a remote Alaskan island qualifies her to understand the complexities of diplomacy with our newly belligerent ex-nemesis.  Bumbling McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds brought up her foreign policy resume of…being the head of the Alaska National Guard.   And true to her NRA ties, she believes it is OK for the United States to shoot first, and ask questions later if we think another nation may pose a threat to us.

None of this should come as a surprise from a woman who does not believe that global warming is caused by humans, does not believe in evolution, had no interest in traveling anywhere until politics forced her to, believes schools should only teach sexual abstinence but not the benefits of safe sex or contraception, that the Iraq War is a task from God, and who tried to have books banned from the library, and supports an Alaskan group that honestly thinks it has a chance of seceding from the Union.  Obviously, education and knowledge are not very high on Sarah Palin’s priority list.  How ironic that McCain’s hopes of winning now partly hinge on his advisers’ ability to help Palin cram for the final exam: 50 more days of campaigning till election day, including a debate with Joe Biden.  So far they have failed in their tutorial abilities, as Palin flunked through the pre-test by Gibson, largely attempting to evade all of the important questions.

Palin’s calls for reforming Washington are as laughable as her perfection of the art of saying absolutely nothing at all.  Case in point: her answer to Charlie’s question of what exactly she would change from Bush’s tenure while in Washington: “putting government on the side of the people”- which also happened to be her foreign policy plan.  Taking on the old boys in a state with a population of less than 700,000, while accepting millions of dollars of pork does not qualify anybody for the # 2 job on the planet on a reform ticket.  One has to understand the previous President’s major foreign policy doctrine before it can be reformed.  However, Sarah Palin herself does not bother me so much.  She may be a proud redneck who likes to shoot 40 moose at a time while perched high up on a helicopter for kicks, a cowardly pretense of “sport” where your opponent can’t even see you- quite a fair fight indeed, and quite telling about her personality and how she would fight in a political campaign.  But she is very much a part of the American fabric, the type of person that at times breaks through in the lower levels of local or state politics, but would never have the opportunity to cause danger on a national or international stage as the majority of voters realize what a radical this person is.  This has been largely neutralized thanks to tokenism: the fact that the unqualified party is a woman automatically gives her an edge with women voters, just as we must recognize that no male with Palin’s anemic resume would be offered the job.  I hope hockey moms across America get this.  My mom was a hockey mom too who bought this right defenseman the skates and helmet and pads that led to a city league championship, and she gets it.

Much more worrisome than anything else in the Sarah Palin circus is what the selection says about McCain’s decision-making.  He did not perform the most basic due diligence before making such a momentous decision.  She was clearly not vetted very well, so his campaign was caught  like moose in the headlights as many details of Palin’s personal and public life became public thanks to the media.  There is no need to go into all the troublesome details of Palin’s short career, as they have been widely publicized.  It will suffice to say that it was a rash decision and at 72, McCain will not change his style toward actual deliberation on important issues as opposed to trusting yet another wild whim on his craps-table view of the universe.

If Sarah Palin’s itchy trigger finger is ever placed on the nuclear button bestowed upon her by God one day, do not be surprised to see a world that has indeed changed- for the worse.  America deserves whoever it votes for in November.