Cries of Fascism: Left-Wing Hypocrites Fan Flames of Hatred

Dave Neiwert has made a career out of fanning the flames of partisan demonization. He has, for example, offered a theory of "pseudo fascism" which he uses as an all-purpose bludgeon to slander conservatives as the reincarnation of the Nazis.

While scholarship has long noted fascist tendencies in the far right-wing of American politics, the comprehensive catch-all nature of Neiwart's project makes him look like an unhinged crank.

As Classical Values once remarked, about Neiwart's "pseudo-fascist" thesis:

I think it is a heavy-handed appeal to the emotions, because for most people the word epitomizes all that is evil. Focusing on some characteristics of fascism (nationalism and one-party rule), and comparing these features to a supposedly monolithic "conservative movement" ignores such primary features as murderous suppression of all dissent and government regimentation of industry -- which American conservatives simply don't support. This trivializes genuine fascism, and further, by making all who want this country to win the war (or their party to win the election), would implicitly tar many millions of Americans with the "pseudo-fascist" smear.

Keep this in mind while watching Katrina vanden Heuvel respond to GOP Representative Michele Bachmann's attack on Barack Obama's anti-American associations:

Note the emphasis here on "struggle," which is in essence, "class struggle" in Marxist-Leninist ideololgy. Ms. Vanden Heuvel is the editor of the far-left wing journal the Nation, but she herself is the epitome of the "liberal elite" and her own personal history mocks the notion of struggle, revealing it as no more than a hypocritical "progressive" power grab.

According to her profile on Discover the Networks:

A defining moment for Katrina vanden Heuvel came in May 2002 during one of her frequent appearances on MSNBC's Hardball. After vanden Heuvel spoke about how she lived in Harlem and understood the poor, host Chris Matthews let his audience know that in fact she lived in a multimillion-dollar townhouse in a posh section of Morningside Heights.

Did you notice the pure rage in Ms. Vanden Heuvel diatribe? There's a totally unveiled hatred of conservatives in this clip - it's an unmistakable anger at anything or anyone who might dare question the truly radical associations of Barack Obama, aka "The One."

In my post last night, "Is Barack Obama Anti-American?," I noted how today's radical left indeed hates American tradition and values, and hopes to turn this country into a social democratic regime. I suggested that anti-Americans aren't necessarily bomb-throwers; they're simply leftist ideologues who want a change of regime in the U.S., to turn the American state into something more like Canada or Denmark.

When people like Michele Bachmann are able to enunciate so perfectly the nature of that anti-Americanism, and Barack Obama's complete comfort in surrounding himself in it, the left has no other alternative than to resort to unhinged cries of McCarthyism and fascism.

It's all hypocritical and inflammatory - and is a preview of things to come under a possible Democratic administration in January.

Desperate Times: Another Vicious Attack on McCain Family

With all the talk of a Democratic landslide in November (discussed here), it seems a measure of desperation on how far the left-wing media will go to smear John McCain and his family.

Exhibit A is this morning's New York Times story, "Behind McCain, Outsider in Capital Wanting Back In," which is a hit piece on Cindy McCain disguised as biographical essay.

I've just read the article, and I frankly see nothing really new and newsworthy. The Times has hammered Mrs. McCain in a number of journalistic smears throughout the year, and today's article is just piling on.

In fact, the hatchet-job agenda of the article is revealed by Jodi Kantor's reprehensible rumor-trolling at Facebook, which is explained by Michael Goldfarb:

Today the New York Times launched yet another in a series of vicious attacks on Senator John McCain, this time targeting not the candidate, but his wife Cindy. Under the guise of a 'profile' piece, the New York Times fails to cover any new ground or provide any discernible value to the reader other than to portray Mrs. McCain in the worst possible light. Though Mrs. McCain’s battle with drug addiction and even her miscarriages are again reported, the paper entirely ignores a life devoted to family and charity work in the most impoverished and violent corners of the world -- except when a detail can be quibbled with so as to imply some kind of deceit. This campaign made every effort to share personal accounts of Mrs. McCain’s good works with the paper, but apparently they were deemed unfit for publication in the New York Times. This is gutter journalism at its worst -- an unprecedented attack on a presidential candidate's spouse.

In order to assemble this barrage of petty and personal attacks, the New York Times employed tactics that are obviously unprofessional and almost certainly unethical. This campaign has obtained a copy of an email sent by New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor to a 16-year-old girl and friend of Bridget McCain, the youngest of the McCain children. Ms. Kantor sought to dupe the unsuspecting minor by soliciting ‘advice’ on how best to approach the story, as if a top-flight investigative reporter at the New York Times would need the assistance of an underage girl in writing a hit piece.

The New York Times has stooped lower than this campaign ever imagined possible in an attempt to discredit a woman whose only apparent sin is being married to the man that would oppose that paper’s preferred candidate, Barack Obama, in his quest for the Presidency. It is a black mark on the record of a paper that was once widely respected, but is now little more than a propaganda organ for the Democratic party. The New York Times has accused John McCain of running a dishonorable campaign, but today it is plain to see where the real dishonor lies.

Goldfarb's post includes the text of an e-mail to Bridget McCain’s 16-year-old classmates, as well as the text of a letter to the Times from McCain family attorney, John M. Dowd, who wrote:

These allegations and efforts to hurt Cindy have been a matter of public record for sixteen years. Cindy has been quite open and frank about her issues for all these years. Any further attempts to harass and injure her ... will be met with an appropriate response. While she may be in the public eye, she is not public property nor the property of the press to abuse and defame.

See also Captain Ed, who writes:

The New York Times long ago transformed itself into an advocacy organization for Barack Obama. Trolling for dirt on Facebook among teenagers for hit pieces on a candidate’s spouse hits a new low. Does the National Enquirer even do that?

See also, Memeorandum.

Is Barack Obama Anti-American?

Is Barack Obama anti-American? Are Democrats? Are liberals?

These are some of the questions floating around tonight in light of GOP Representive Michele Bachman's appearance on Hardball:

It's best to watch the whole interview to see Chris Matthews trying to pin down Bachmann to name names of anti-American legislators in Congress (and there's certainly a few).

But I'll say right now, though, frankly, Bachmann nails it: She singles out Barack Obama's radical associates one by one: William Ayers, Michael Pfleger, and Jeremiah Wright and tells it like it is. These folks by word and deed can't stand America? Obama himself has gone through a life of ideological contortions and scheming political machinations to get where he is today, which is in hot water for admitting he wants to take the private property of everyday Americans and "spread the wealth."

So, what's the problem? The left goes against center-right values all the time, right?

Oh, it's polically incorrect to allege that Democrats are anti-American? That liberals are anti-American?

It all boils down to definitions and usage. Do Democrats and leftists in overwhelming numbers want to blow up the United States? Absolutely not. But one can be anti-American without wanting to commit terror and treason against U.S. institutions and American citizens.

Anti-Americanism is for all intents and purposes a core element of contemporary left-wing ideology. Leftists do not like what America IS today and what it DOES now - that is, the left hates contemporary American PRAXIS.

The left loves American IDEALS - America's PROMISE - and leftists routinely uses them to excoriate the nation's alleged history of irredeemable racist oppression and xenophobia. These are the same people who look the other way at Ayers' history of unrepentent America-bashing to claim he's rehabilitated. These are the same people who have literally pulled for an American defeat in Iraq - that'll show those damned neocons that they can't just run around the world implanting proconsuls in Third World regimes! These are the same people who want the United Nations to exert sovereign power over American affairs, to rein in American hegemony gone wild.

I checked Google to see if I could come up with any good definitions of anti-Americanism. Most of what I found applied to international opinions of the United States, but Dennis Prager did offer a pretty good first cut of leftist hatred of America today:

Why does the left hate America...?

The answer ... is that ... American success refutes the socialist ideals of the left; American use of force to vanquish evil refutes the left's pacifist tendencies; America is the last great country that believes in putting some murderers to death, something that is anathema to the left; when America is governed by conservatives, it uses the language of good and evil, language regarded by the left as "Manichean"; most Americans still believe in the Judeo-Christian value system, another target of the left because the left regards all religions as equally valid (or more to the point, equally foolish and dangerous) and regards God-based morality as the moral equivalent of alchemy.

Gerhard Baker also had a nice take on leftists and anti-Americanism in the global context:

They want to construct an international system that will for ever prevent the US from pursuing its own objectives, a system designed to dilute, counterbalance and constrain America’s ability to govern itself. They prefer a world in which American democracy is subordinated to a kind of global government, rule by a global elite, tasked to make decisions on everyone’s behalf in the name of multilateralism.

This brings us back to Barack Obama.

Folks should go back and read his Foreign Affairs essay from July/August 2007, "Renewing American Leadership," which includes this nugget:

Today, we are ... called to provide visionary leadership. This century's threats are at least as dangerous as and in some ways more complex than those we have confronted in the past....

These threats demand a new vision of leadership in the twenty-first century - a vision that draws from the past but is not bound by outdated thinking. The Bush administration responded to the unconventional attacks of 9/11 with conventional thinking of the past, largely viewing problems as state-based and principally amenable to military solutions. It was this tragically misguided view that led us into a war in Iraq that never should have been authorized and never should have been waged. In the wake of Iraq and Abu Ghraib, the world has lost trust in our purposes and our principles.

A vision of blame America first...

These lines could have been written by Daily Kos, MoveOn.org, or any of the other Bush-bashing, America-hating leftists intent to tie-down American power like Gulliver and the Lilliputians.

Michelle Bachman is being vilified now because on these issues and more, she represents all that stands in the way of leftist nihilism, totalitarian control, and the radical march to destroy American traditionalism and exceptionalism.

God bless her.

Trial-Heat Election Model Predicts 52.7 McCain Victory

Even the most sophisticated political science models are likely to exclude relevant variables contributing to the outcome of a presidential election, and thus - while often quite good - I've normally considered presidential forecasting research as knife-sharpening exercises rather than particularly reliable predictions of general election voting outcomes.

That said, with the intensity of this year's race more dramatic than any election in my lifetime, I've been paying some attention to the symposium on forecasting the 2008 elections at PS: Political Science & Politics, the journal of the profession at the American Political Science Association.

The symposium features ten research articles, both on the presidential race and the congressional elections.

Considering all the attention in the media and the blogosphere to a seeming Barack Obama November landslide, readers might want to mull over the piece from James Campbell, "The Trial-Heat Forecast of the 2008 Presidential Vote: Performance and Value Considerations in an Open-Seat Election."

Campbell's model combines Gallup's Labor Day "trial-heat" poll findings (head-to-head polls) with second-quarter GDP growth rates into a forecasting model that - in its most recent specifications, from 1992 to 2004 - has been accurate within one-half a percentage point of Gallup's final pre-election survey.

Here's how Campbell describes the model (with citations excluded):

In drawing heavily upon the preference polls, the models reflect both retrospective and (pre-campaign) prospective evaluations by the voters. While some voters may simply cast a verdict on whether they are satisfied with the performance of the in-party, other voters evaluate the issue positions, values, and character traits of the candidates and can do much of this even before the general-election campaign gets underway. Yet others may weigh both retrospective and prospective considerations in forming early vote inclinations. Unlike approval ratings, the trial-heat polls tap evaluations produced by whatever mix of prospective and retrospective considerations that voters in a particular year find convincing. The use of the early preference polls also allows the forecast to reflect the candidates’ relative success in uniting their parties’ bases at the outset of the campaign. This is an important aspect of the models since early party unity is more important to the overall vote than either the unity of partisans deciding later in the campaign or the division of later-deciding swing voters.

"Retrospective voting" refers to voters deciding their pick on the basis of the incumbent party's past policy performance: "What have you done for me lately?"

What Campbell finds, however, is that trial-heat models don't assume retrospective evaluations as a valid predictor of voter outcomes. What's key is that candidates matter, but also that open-seat elections are more closely decided presidential races (than when an incumbent is running for reelection), and that "dead-heat" contests are more likely in a open-seat election within a competitive party system environment.

Frankly, that sounds a lot like the state of the 2008 campaign is it now stands. As of today, Gallup shows a virtual dead-heat in the presidential horse race, with Barack Obama leading John McCain 49 to 47 percent among likely voters. As Campbell notes:

In short, the greater competition and less retrospective character of open-seat elections makes preferences polls particularly better suited than presidential approval ratings to predict the vote in open-seat elections.

"Preference polls" are those on the incumbent president's public approval ratings, and the implication here is that George W. Bush's historic low approval rates are likely to have a marginal impact on the outcome of the election.

Here's Campbell's conclusion:

There are ... however, good reasons to think that a big Obama win might not be in the cards. If voters are not purely retrospective or, at least, consider the presidential candidates’ records as well as the administration’s performance, if open-seat elections are more prospectively decided and more closely fought, and if elections for third-terms are fought on a level playing field rather than one tilted against the in-party, then we may be in for tight race....

So, what should we anticipate? What are the forecasts of the trial-heat forecast and its companion convention bump equation? First, the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ August release of the real GDP growth rate in the second quarter was 3.3%(annualized). Second, the preference poll conducted by Gallup from September 5 to 7, the first poll in September after the conventions, indicated that 49% expressed a preference for Senator John McCain, 44% expressed a preference for Senator Barack Obama, and that the remaining 7% favored a third-party candidate or were undecided. Converted to two-party preferences, Senator McCain as the in-party candidate had 52.7% of the two-party split. Plugging the second-quarter growth rate and the Labor Day preference poll numbers into the trial-heat equation produces a forecast that Senator McCain should be expected to receive 52.7% of the two-party popular vote. Based on the out-of-sample errors of this equation, the likelihood that Senator McCain will receive the vote plurality is 83%. The companion convention-bump equation predicts a vote of 52.2%. This is based on the pre-convention preference poll split of 50% for McCain, a net convention bump of 2.7%, and the secondquarter GDP growth rate used in the trial-heat forecast equation. Based on the out-of-sample errors of this equation, there is a 76% probability that Senator McCain will receive a plurality of the national two-party popular vote.

As noted in the introduction to this post, election forecasts are limited to the variables specified in the model, and Campbell's forecast doesn't seem to be catching the impact of dramatic late economic shocks (like the past few weeks), as well as other factors unique to this year, such as considerably likely variation between reported survey responses and actual election day vote-behavior (the possibility of a "Bradley effect" dampening the support for the Democratic ticket).

That said, given uncertain market trends (up-and-down again stock rallies), the potential effect on the polls from John McCain's improved debate performance, and the unknown impact of party mobilization and youth turnout on election day, this race is going down to the wire as a potentially 50-50 election.

Given this analysis, the GOP ticket is performing much better than would be expected in this year's prevailing electoral environment, and it's way too soon to be announcing a Democratic Party landslide.

Footnote: Skeptics of the case made here are encouraged to check some of the other research pieces at the symposium, especially, Robert S. Erikson and Christopher Wlezien's, "Leading Economic Indicators, the Polls, and the Presidential Vote."

Incendiary Sign or Naïve Political Memorabilia?

Some hard-left Democrats see their chance to even the score a bit, although all I'm seeing here is a collection of campaign memorabilia rather than a full-blown statement of revolutionary fervor at a Barack Obama campaign office (compare below).

But the Broward Sun-Sentinel provides some interesting background:

Among the images that greeted visitors to the John McCain campaign office in Pompano Beach this week was a sign headlined "Barrack Hussein Obama” that compared the Democratic presidential candidate to Karl Marx, Adolf Hitler and Fidel Castro.

Shown a picture of the sign Thursday night, Broward Republican Chairman Chip LaMarca said he was "disgusted" by it and would immediately go to the office and remove it.

"I'm speechless at the ignorance," LaMarca said. "It's not something we can condone.

"We're trying to promote positive messages for our candidates. I understand people want their candidate to win. It's ridiculous. I'll find out who put it up there, and maybe they'll volunteer somewhere else."

The sign on an 8 1/2 by 14 inch sheet of paper looks as if it was printed from a personal computer. It's part of a gallery of posters and signs on the wall immediately inside the front door of the Pompano office, near the intersection of Sample Road and U.S. 1.

Others signs on the wall include a portrait of McCain and his wife, Cindy, Republican elephants, patriotic sayings, and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin holding a large hunting rifle.

The sign in question mocked Obama's call for change and asked what other figures "called for change in this fashion." The answer: Marx, Hitler, Castro, Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini. "And you want Obama for President? Are you nuts,” the sign said.

So, the Broward Republican Chair moved quickly to have this volunteer's poster taken down...

Meanwhile, I don't recall a similar outrage on the left when Ohio's James Burge, a Lorain County Common Pleas Judge, mounted a companion set of wall-sized images of Che Guevara and Barack Obama in his county governmental office.

Hmm, maybe we're seeing a bit of desperation on the left...

Mentally-Challenged Georgia Man Coerced to Vote Obama

Via Captain Ed: Election officials in Albany, Georgia, are investigating the case of Jack Justice, a developmentally-disabled adult, who was coerced to cast a ballot for Barack Obama in the state's early voting:

There's no word yet on possible ACORN involvement, although I doubt this will be the last of such outrages this year.

7th Grader Called Racist for Wearing McCain-Palin T-Shirt

From Volusia County, Florida: Ashleigh Jones, a 7th grader at New Smyrna Beach Middle School, was called a racist for wearing a McCain-Palin campaign shirt on campus:

Jones is volunteering at the Republican Headquarters in New Smyrna Beach. The Palin t-shirt was a gift from her fellow volunteers.

But when she wore it to school she learned just how tough politics can be.

“Some of the students were calling me racist because I was Caucasian,” she said. “I wanted the Caucasian man to win. And I told them that’s not true. It’s my freedom of speech, it’s my opinion.”

Jones' parents are taking the attacks in stride, seeing this as a chance for their daughter to express her views appropriately.

Jones, the 7th grader, plans to wear her shirt to school again.

Recall that Democratic-leftists are assumed to be more "tolerant" of difference than conservatives, but as we've seen this season, the essential totalitarianism of left-wing ideology is on full display.

Charles Krauthammer offered a penetrating analysis of the left's racism double-standard:

Let me get this straight. A couple of agitated yahoos in a rally of thousands yell something offensive and incendiary, and John McCain and Sarah Palin are not just guilty by association - with total strangers, mind you - but worse: guilty according to The New York Times of "race-baiting and xenophobia."

But should you bring up Barack Obama's real associations - 20 years with Jeremiah Wright, working on two foundations and distributing money with William Ayers, citing the raving Michael Pfleger as one who helps him keep his moral compass (Chicago Sun-Times, April 2004) and the long-standing relationship with the left-wing vote-fraud specialist ACORN - you have crossed the line into illegitimate guilt by association. Moreover, it is tinged with racism.

Yep, racism - facism, even.

We need more kids like Ashleigh Jones out there, standing up for what's right.

William Ayers and Social-Justice Education

Inside Higher Ed reported the other day that over 3,000 professional educators and university professors have signed a petition in support of William Ayers, the unrepentent '60s terrorist and known associate of Barack Obama.

The petition, at Support Bill Ayers, states:

His participation in political activity 40 years ago is history; what is most relevant now is his continued engagement in progressive causes, and his exemplary contribution — including publishing 16 books — to the field of education.

What is that "exemplary contribution"?

According to Sol Stern, at the Wall Street Journal, Ayers' educational pedagogy advocates the destruction of America as a social responsibility:

I've studied Mr. Ayers's work for years and read most of his books. His hatred of America is as virulent as when he planted a bomb at the Pentagon. And this hatred informs his educational "reform" efforts. Of course, Mr. Obama isn't going to appoint him to run the education department. But the media mainstreaming of a figure like Mr. Ayers could have terrible consequences for the country's politics and public schools....

Mr. Ayers was hired by the Chicago public schools to train teachers, and played a leading role in the $160 million Annenberg Challenge grant that distributed funds to a host of so-called school-reform projects, including some social-justice themed schools and schools organized by Acorn. Barack Obama became the first chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge organization in 1995. When asked for an opinion on the Obama/Ayers connection, Mayor Daley told the New York Times that Mr. Ayers had "done a lot of good in this city and nationally."

In fact, as one of the leaders of a movement for bringing radical social-justice teaching into our public school classrooms, Mr. Ayers is not a school reformer. He is a school destroyer.

He still hopes for a revolutionary upheaval that will finally bring down American capitalism and imperialism, but this time around Mr. Ayers sows the seeds of resistance and rebellion in America's future teachers. Thus, education students signing up for a course Mr. Ayers teaches at UIC, "On Urban Education," can read these exhortations from the course description: "Homelessness, crime, racism, oppression -- we have the resources and knowledge to fight and overcome these things. We need to look beyond our isolated situations, to define our problems globally. We cannot be child advocates . . . in Chicago or New York and ignore the web that links us with the children of India or Palestine."

The readings Mr. Ayers assigns to his university students are as intellectually diverse as a political commissar's indoctrination session in one of his favorite communist tyrannies. The list for his urban education course includes the bible of the critical pedagogy movement, Brazilian Marxist Paolo Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed"; two books by Mr. Ayers himself; and "Teaching to Transgress" by bell hooks (lower case), the radical black feminist writer.

Two years ago Mr. Ayers shared with his students a letter he wrote to a young radical friend: "I've been told to grow up from the time I was ten until this morning. Bullshit. Anyone who salutes your 'youthful idealism' is a patronizing reactionary. Resist! Don't grow up! I went to Camp Casey [Cindy Sheehan's vigil at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas] in August precisely because I'm an agnostic about how and where the rebellion will break out, but I know I want to be there and I know it will break out." (The letter is on his Web site, http://www.billayers.org/.)

America's ideal of public schooling as a means of assimilating all children (and particularly the children of new immigrants) into a common civic and democratic culture is already under assault from the multiculturalists and their race- and gender-centered pedagogy. Mr. Ayers has tried to give the civic culture ideal a coup de grace, contemptuously dismissing it as nothing more than what the critical pedagogy theorists commonly refer to as "capitalist hegemony."

In the world of the Ed schools, Mr. Ayers's movement has established a sizeable beachhead -- witness his election earlier this year as vice president for curriculum of the American Education Research Association, the nation's largest organization of education professors and researchers.

If Barack Obama wins on Nov. 4, the "guy in the neighborhood" is not likely to get an invitation to the Lincoln bedroom. But with the Democrats controlling all three branches of government, there's a real danger that Mr. Ayers's social-justice movement in the schools will get even more room to maneuver and grow.

I took a brief look at the Support Bill Ayers petition.

Jack Donnelly and Adolph Reed, Jr., two political scientists whose works I've read, have signed on in support of Ayers. I'm sure I'd find more if I examined the petition more carefully.

Donnelly's a specialist in international human rights and a U.C. Berkeley alumnus, while Reed's an announced black-studies radical who sees Barack Obama as a race-accomodationist sell-out.

Whatever their motivations, as well as all of the others, it's clear to me that the ideological indoctrination they support is a disaster for the future of this nation.

Image Credit: Wall Street Journal

Barack Obama and the Pre-Roe Legal Regime

As Ed Whelan argues, had Roe v. Wade been on the books in 1961, Stanley Ann Dunham, Barack Obama's mother, may well have aborted her pregnancy:

Nearly 48 years ago, a young woman, not yet 18, became pregnant in her freshman year of college. Living in a time and place in which abortion was generally illegal, she proceeded to marry the father of her child and gave birth to a son. Perhaps she would have done so irrespective of the abortion laws at the time, even if, say, she lived in a legal culture that celebrated abortion as a fundamental right. Very possibly not. (I haven’t found any statistics on the percentage of pregnant college freshmen who abort their pregnancies, but indirect indications suggest that it’s very high.)

Barack Obama may actually believe, as he stated yesterday, that Roe v. Wade “was rightly decided.” But it may be very lucky for him, as the son born of that woman, that it hadn’t been decided a dozen or so years earlier.

Thus, Obama quite possibly owes his life to the pre-Roe legal regime that prohibited the termination of pregnancy.

Read the rest of Whelan's piece, here (no matter the Illinois Senator's own position on the issue, Obama's backers might not now have "The One" as their candidate had his mother taken advantage of the very policies he now promotes).

For context, recall that "Barack Obama is the most extreme pro-abortion candidate ever to seek the office of President of the United States."

Obama Risks Driver’s Licenses for Illegal Aliens

Via Ben Smith, here's the new ad from the National Republican Trust:

Here's the background:

The driver’s license issue emerged in September 2007, when then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer ordered New York officials to grant driver’s licenses to illegals. During the Oct. 30, 2007, Democratic primary debate at Drexel University, Sen. Hillary Clinton fumbled a question from the late Tim Russert over whether she supported Spitzer’s plan. As for Obama, he has supported driver’s licenses for illegals since his days in the Illinois Senate, and continues to maintain that training illegals to drive, and insuring them, enhances public safety.

No doubt Democrats will renounce this as pure fear-mongering (especially members of the radical left, who are either domestic terrorists themselves, terrorist cheerleaders, or terrorist enablers).

Yet, whether there is a direct relationship between support for illegrant immigrant driver's licenses and the boarding of flights to commit mass destruction (terrorists could board U.S. flights with foreign passports), Barack Obama's position puts him on the opposite side of public opinion on the issue.

Barack Obama is genuinely too radical and too risky.

The Shape of the Race, 10-16-08

I noted earlier, in my "Shape of the Race" essay from October 1, that "Republicans are getting worried and are urging McCain to go on the offensive against Obama."

Since then, with all due respect, it seems the sky is falling for a number of conservatives, who are throwing up their hands, crying, "well, darn, we should at least save the filibuster" (here and here, for example).

To be fair, I've been tempted to join in the pre-election mourning, but I can't: I simply don't believe the game's up, that the self-identified Democratic socialist Barack Obama has things all sewn up.

And, well, he doesn't, frankly.

Investor's Business Daily, widely respected as running one of the most accurate polling operations in recent elections, has Obama up by just three points in its most recent survey, 45 to 42 percent:

McCain clung to a three-point margin behind Obama entering their last debate. The race remains a virtual dead heat among Independents, with 24% still undecided. Investors are also dead- locked, while non-investors favor Obama. So far, McCain is not doing as well as Bush did in 2004 with key GOP support groups, including those who call themselves conservatives and married women.

Plus, Rasmussen has McCain within four points of Obama, 50 to 46 percent (as of 10-16):

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows Barack Obama attracting 50% of the vote while John McCain earns 46%. It’s the first time since September 25 that McCain’s support has reached 46%, but Obama has now enjoyed a four-to-eight point advantage for twenty-one straight days...

Finally, the race has tightened dramatically in Gallup's daily tracking poll, which just recently began reporting the findings on "likely voters," rather than "register voters" (and was thus showing larger trends for Obama), and now we see a true dead-heat, 49-47 percent!

The "traditional" likely voter model, which Gallup has employed for past elections, factors in prior voting behavior as well as current voting intention. This has generally shown a closer contest, reflecting the fact that Republicans have typically been more likely to vote than Democrats in previous elections. Today's results show Obama with a two-point advantage over McCain using this likely voter model, 49% to 47%, this is within the poll's margin of error.

Imagine that ... a "two-point advantage..."

Keep in mind that Barack Obama also has the highest unfavorables of any presidential candidate since Michael Dukakis in 1988.

Barack Obama just can't put John McCain away.

We'll see the full impact of last night's debate by the end of the weekend, but I'm not expecting the dynamics to change all that much. Obama's had the headway for weeks, and the while economic crisis remains the driving issue in the electorate, there's a large sense of uncertainty floating around.

Never surrender!

Graphic Credit: Gallup Poll

Daily Kos and "Joe the Racist Plumber"

Daily Kos has attacked Joe Wurzelbacher as "Joe the Racist Plumber."

Daily Kos also published Wurzelbacher's address online earlier today.

Now, here's how Markos Moulitsas defends his blog's program of poliltical demonization:

If you want a radical departure from the governments we've suffered the last several decades, we must deliver a whipping the likes Republicans haven't seen in ages.

I realize there are people uncomfortable with aggressive language and action. That's the difference between liberal weenies and movement progressives. Liberal weenies sit around thinking that "the truth" is enough for victory, and that if we simply explain to voters why Democrats are better, why, we can't possibly lose any elections! That's the crowd that wants to keep the "high ground" and doesn't want to go down in the gutters and fight the GOP where they live, lest we get a little muddied ourselves.

Movement progressives realize that we must do everything necessary allowable under the law to win because elections have consequences. This isn't about who is most pure, but about taking the fight to the enemy and aggressively embracing progressivism, offering clear contrasts between us and them, and fighting fire with fire. There's no ambiguity about where I belong.

So to my fellow movement progressives, embrace that killer instinct and let's finish the job. We've got conservatives demoralized and on the run. They are retrenching around their most important voices. So let's pick off those they've left exposed and go after their best defended leaders as well.

There you have it ... straight from the voice of the "mainstream of the Democratic Party."

I'll tell you what ... I'm not demoralized.

Note: "Today, 'progressive' is the term of choice for practically everyone who has a politics that used to be called 'radical.'"

This includes Barack Obama.

I'll be fighting the left with the GOP in power or in opposition. There's nothing worse the Markos Moulitisas and his ilk, and I'll take my stand for what's right.

Barack "Spread the Wealth" Obama

All along conservatives have hammered the point that Barack Obama is fundamentally a socialist radical.

Now, with last night's debate, the question which had long seemed forgotten in the mainstream media, is back in play. Indeed, James Pethokoukis asks, "Did Barack 'Spread the Wealth' Obama Just Blow the Election?"

A while back I chatted with a University of Chicago professor who was a frequent lunch companion of Obama's. This professor said that Obama was as close to a full-out Marxist as anyone who has ever run for president of the United States. Now, I tend to quickly dismiss that kind of talk as way over the top. My working assumption is that Obama is firmly within the mainstream of Democratic politics. But if he is as free with that sort of redistributive philosophy in private as he was on the campaign trail this week, I have no doubt that U of C professor really does figure him as a radical. And after last night's debate, a few more Americans might think that way, too. McCain's best line: "Now, of all times in America, we need to cut people's taxes. We need to encourage business, create jobs, not spread the wealth around."

And by the way, I just noticed that the IBD/TIPP poll, the most accurate in 2004, has McCain down by just 3 points. If the contest is perceived by the voters as a contest between a wealth redistributor and a wealth creator, then it could be a long night come Nov. 4. This is still a center-right country, gang. Note this Gallup poll from June:

When given a choice about how government should address the numerous economic difficulties facing today's consumer, Americans overwhelmingly—by 84% to 13%—prefer that the government focus on improving overall economic conditions and the jobs situation in the United States as opposed to taking steps to distribute wealth more evenly among Americans.

There you go.

I personally have no doubts at all the Barack Obama is socialist - perhaps not a full-blown Marxist Leninist, as I've written - but he's definitely socialist in his basic orientation on the relationship between economic class and state power.

What's amazing is how so many on the Democratic Party-left refuse to identify with that ideological label, preferring the amorphous "progressive" instead. It's six in one hand and a half-dozen in the other, for practical purposes.

Thankfully, Obama has yet to close the sale, so American tradition and values still may see the light of day after November 4.

Joe Wurzelbacher Attacked by Netroots Mobs!

Here's the new McCain ad buy, featuring “Joe the Plumber”:

This is, of course, Joe Wurzelbacher, the Ohio "Joe Sixpack" dude, who was the initial focus of last's night's presidential debate, and who is now the target of a coordinated defamation campaign by the radical left, which includes the release of Wurzelbacher's home address at Daily Kos.

The New Editor puts the Wurzelbacher smears in perspective:

By now everyone who follows politics has heard of Joe Wurzelbacher, a guy from Toledo known now as 'Joe the Plumber,' who asked a question of Barack Obama in a campaign rope line, and was referenced numerous times in last night's debate.

Like many of us, Mr. Wurzelbacher has questions about Barack Obama's tax policy, among other things.

So what happens to Mr. Wurzelbacher for expressing his views?

Reports in the mainstream media appear claiming that he is unlicensed (even though he doesn't need one as an employee of a business or as a contractor working on a residence), and that he apparently has a tax lien filed against him.

Not to be outdone, the Daily Kos published his home address for all the world to see.

The Democratic Underground just threw whatever they could at the guy.

Better think a little longer next time if you wish to criticize a Chicago Democrat running for president (or anything else, for that matter).

You might get 'the treatment.'

Update: Atlantic Monthly smear artist Andrew Sullivan chimes in -- in what appears to be part of his full court press to be named honorary Democratic Party Chicago precinct captain -- here and here.

Update II: More from the excruciatingly slimy Sullivan, who takes issue with the fact that Joe is Wurzelbacher's middle name, not his first.

Frankly, nothing is beneath the left these days ... nothing!

Virginia GOP Mailer Hits Democrats on Appeasement

The Virginia Republican Party has sent out a mass-mailer attacking the Democratic Party for appeasing our enemies.

Talking Points Memo is up in arms about it, denouncing the "slime."

In the race's final stretch, much of the real sludge and slime that floats to the surface will be the work not of the campaigns but of under-the-radar operations run by state parties and the like.

Here, for instance, is a new mailer from the Republican Party of Virginia that has to be seen to be believed. It hits Dems -- and by extension, Obama -- for wanting to appease terrorists and rogue leaders.

But the key is the last page, which displays a man who looks like Obama but with the same dark and sinister aspect as the bad actors depicted elsewhere in the mailing. Note the words superimposed over his face (click on the images to enlarge)...

Click the link for the image, which is narrow-cut photo of Obama-like figure.

TPM's rebuttal is not only to excoriate the "sleaze," but to argue that Barack Obama's policy is essentially identical to the current administration's, which is said to now be meeting with our enemies and finalizing diplomatic agreements that in fact consolidate the status quo (with a link here).

The problem with this is that not only has the Democratic Party long demonstrated in Iraq and Iran that it's the party of surrender, but that many prominent voices on the right have repudiated the Bush administration's capituation to Pyonyang and Tehran.

A John McCain administration, in this view, would return the U.S. to a foreign policy of firmness, bolstered by victory in Iraq.

Barack Obama, in contrast, will meet with our enemies "without precondition," which is translated into making absolutely no demands on the forces of evil arrayed against the United States.

Keep in mind, the Virginia Republican Party is simply playing traditional direct-mail politics. If folks want to see sleaze, just keep your eyes on the activities of the Kos-backed Demcratic Party base in the days ahead. Barack Obama had no comeback to McCain denunciation last night of the disgusting t-shirts worn by Democrat activists attacking Sarah Palin.

The Democrats will appease out enemies, and TPM's faux outrage does nothing to rebut that fact.

Obama Plays Defense in Final Presidential Debate

I let out a hoot last night when John McCain slipped in calling Barack Obama "Senator Government." The Wall Street Journal says that was the best moment of the debate:

Whether or not last night's much-improved debate performance helps John McCain rally in the polls, at least voters finally got a clearer sense of the policy differences. For our money, the best line of the night was Mr. McCain's Freudian slip of referring to Barack Obama as "Senator Government." Neither candidate is offering policies that meet the serious economic moment. But Mr. McCain would let Americans keep more of their own income to ride out the downturn, while Mr. Obama is revealing that his default agenda is to spend money and expand the government.

Beyond this, I think Barack Obama was on defense the whole night. McCain won the debate for his aggressive stance and clearly detailed responses on the economy. Unfortunately, I have to agree with Noah Pollock that the Arizona Senator missed a chance to drive the stake:

Opportunities abounded to drive home simple, direct, and perfectly legitimate arguments against Obama: his support for federally-funded and late-term abortions, his mendacity about his tax and health care plans, his associations with America-hating radicals and anti-Semites. He repeatedly tiptoed up to the line, but never quite crossed it. The effect was to discredit such accusations. The back-and-forth about Ayers ended up absolving Obama far more than it incriminated him. If you’re going to bring up Ayers, you better be ready to say something poignant and damaging. Instead, McCain served up Obama a stellar opportunity to make himself look perfectly innocent. And that is exactly what Obama did.

I'll have more on the debate later, and both sides are going to spin their candidate as the winner.

The truth remains that Barack Obama is benefiting from the economy, and Americans are setting aside reservations about machine politics and ideological radicalism in the hope of something new.

Be careful what you wish for, as they say...

McCain Must Expose the Real Obama

Tony Blankley lays out John McCain's challenge in tonight's debate:

The essence of this election season couldn't be simpler. The American public is so appalled at the condition of the country (which it unfairly, but not implausibly blames on the despised President Bush) that with fate casting John McCain in the role of Bush's surrogate, a majority actually is considering voting for Sen. Obama. And when an electorate is intent on doing something, the last thing it wants to hear about are the facts. Moreover, the public's lack of interest in the facts is facilitated by the major American media's refusal to report them....

During the past few weeks, as I have been traveling extensively across the country, I have yet to find anyone (including a few reporters and producers at local news stations in Florida, California and New York) who has heard [all the relevant facts of Obama's opportunistically corrupt past]. The response when I recite the facts is always about the same. More or less: "Really? Wow!"

A few days ago, a senior McCain campaign aide was reported to have said that McCain would rather lose with dignity than win by questionable means. I hope that isn't Sen. McCain's view because the aide has it exactly backward. If the polls are reasonably accurate, three weeks of John McCain's campaigning is the only thing standing in the way of the American public making the most uninformed presidential decision since the invention of the telegraph.

John McCain has an unambiguous duty to the nation to force the public to at least be informed as to the nature and character of Sen. Obama. He needs to lay out all the accurate available information of Obama's prior alliances, affiliations and conduct both for the purpose of revealing Obama's character and Obama's radical policy disposition.

The Obama campaign has raised to a high art the technique of politically intimidating people from commenting honestly about Obama. They play the race card dishonestly, and almost the entire deck from which they deal is filled with race cards and threats of litigation. Real racism is appalling, but the act of falsely charging racism undercuts the very causes of equality and tolerance.

As courageous as John McCain's life has been to date, the next three weeks may be his most heroic. He must do his duty and alert the public despite the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" that will be shot into his back as he does so. Once he has discharged that duty -- and arranged for sufficient lawyers to protect the ballot boxes from what is likely to be an unprecedented campaign of attempted voter fraud -- Sen. McCain may be confident that his honor will be intact. And he will be ready to serve as our 44th president.

McCain apparently still seeks to take the high road, but he needs to realize that telling the truth about Barack Obama's shady political pedigree is not "dirty politics" but smart strategy.

The credit markets are stabilizing, and polling shows that people are not desperately worried about their economic situation - this means that the market crisis may have peaked just in time for an effective GOP push-back against Barack Obama's oppositional character.

Leftists Look the Other Way on Obama's Radical Past

Tracy, a commenter at my previous post, argued:

Don't you think if there was anything under his rocks, the dirtdobbers would have found it in four years. The worst thing Obama has on his dossier is some fleeting aquaintances with some undesirables. Get a life people.

We have some time to go yet before November 4th, but for die-hard Barack Obama supporters, there is no radical revelation would shake them from their worship of "The One."

Image Credit: PA Pundits

What is Happening to this Country?

I've said it before, but the more I learn about Barack Obama the more I'm convinced he'll be an unbelievable, unending nightmare for the United States.

Melanie Phillips nails it:

You have to pinch yourself – a Marxisant radical who all his life has been mentored by, sat at the feet of, worshipped with, befriended, endorsed the philosophy of, funded and been in turn funded, politically promoted and supported by a nexus comprising black power anti-white racists, Jew-haters, revolutionary Marxists, unrepentant former terrorists and Chicago mobsters, is on the verge of becoming President of the United States. And apparently it’s considered impolite to say so.

It's not just that the most radical ideologues in America have found an eager ally in Barack Obama, but that the national media and public opinion have enabled and embraced this man.

This really is change, but it's something I can't believe, or believe in.

What is happening to the country?

Obama Backer Displays John McCain in Klan Sheets

I sometimes don't know what to think.

Just days after a supporter of Barack Obama attacked Sarah Palin with a disgusting photographic t-shirt at the official campaign webpage, now an Obama backer is alleging John McCain is a bat-wielding Klansman about to lynch Senator Obama:

Ron Havens has a reputation for provocative Halloween displays that reflect his strong political views.

But even Havens was pretty sure his latest effort was over the top. That didn't stop him from setting it up in plain sight anyway.

Havens, who lives on Schuyler County Route 15 (Ridge Road) just south of Odessa, this week set up a Halloween display featuring mannequins that look like Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and Republican rival John McCain.

But the Obama figure looks like he is running, and the McCain likeness is dressed in the hooded robe of the Ku Klux Klan and is carrying a baseball bat.

Havens is quick to point out he is a liberal and a big supporter of Obama, and that the scene is meant to provoke thought about the way he believes Obama has been unfairly treated by the McCain campaign.

Not only does Havens acknowledge that the display's beyond the pale, the local NAACP official refused to condemn the provocation:

Georgia Verdier, president of the Elmira-Corning Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said she was concerned about the injection of race into the presidential campaign when someone called her to complain about the scene.

After viewing a photograph of Havens' display, Verdier said it seems innocuous enough, but she's still concerned it may send the wrong message.

"It looks friendly but I am concerned not so much about this display, but in general about the fear and hate that have entered the campaign," Verdier said.

Of course, the "hate and fear" is being spewed by leftists and their endless allegations of racism, but it's all "innocuous" when directed at the GOP.

This has been the nastiest campaign in memory, and it's not because of John McCain's supporters.

Nebraska’s Child Abandonment Nightmare

I'm frankly blown away at the news that a Detroit mother drove 12 hours and 700 miles in the middle of the night to abandon her 13 year-old son at a "safe-haven" hospital in Omaha, Nebraska:

A Michigan mother drove roughly 12 hours to Omaha, so she could abandon her 13-year-old son at a hospital under the state's unique safe-haven law, Nebraska officials said Monday.

The boy from the Detroit area is the second teenager from outside Nebraska and 18th child overall abandoned in the state since the law took effect in July.

"I certainly recognize and can commiserate and empathize with families across our state and across the country who are obviously struggling with parenting issues, but this is not the appropriate way of dealing with them, whether you're in Nebraska or whether you're in another state," said Todd Landry, who heads the state's Department of Health and Human Services' division of children and family services.

There was no sign the boy was in immediate danger before he was abandoned early Monday, but an investigation into the boy's situation was still continuing, Landry said.

The boy has been placed in an emergency shelter. Landry said the family doesn't appear to have ties to Nebraska and he wasn't sure if the family had sought help in Michigan first.

State officials have met with the boy's mother, Landry said but wouldn't immediately address her reasons for leaving her son. He said he believed the boy's parents were married but wasn't sure if the father agreed to the decision.

Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman, who is Republican, issued a press release on October 7 acknowledging the dire consequences of the law and announcing the state's intent to amend the legislation:

Abandonment of an older child is potentially very devastating. Human services professionals have highlighted the difference in giving up a baby who will grow up knowing their birth family wanted a better life for them versus the impact of a parent giving up on an older child.

Nebraskans believe strongly in parental responsibility. The essential element defining any family is the knowledge that parents provide unconditional love for their children.

Here's Captain Ed's remarks on the law, from October 9:

When Nebraska passed a law that allowed panicked mothers to abandon their babies at hospitals with immunity from prosecution, many hailed it as a breakthrough in helping to keep unwanted infants alive. Now it looks more like a poster child for bad legislation.

But note this from the comments at a "women's issues" blog:

This is perhaps just another canary in the mineshaft of just how tight and tense our world - especially financially - is becoming.

If anything ... these [open-ended] laws should be universal across the country.

No doubt the writer's a Democrat, and is looking forward to a Barack Obama administration.

This is not a stretch: Recall that Obama, aka Senator Infanticide, has consistently voted against born-alive infant protection legislation, which indicates the Democratic nominee's demonstrated willingness to abandon those most in need of society's protection - not unlike the Detroit mother who abandoned her son, along with her moral responsibility, at the steps of the hospital's door.

Image Credit: ABC News

The Wright Ticket to the McCain Comeback

The Los Angeles Times reports that John McCain is looking for another comeback:

John McCain unveiled a feisty new campaign speech Monday, but the talk of change and promise of a fist-shaking fight to November failed to allay Republican concerns that the presidential race may be slipping beyond his grasp.

With 21 days to the election, there was widespread agreement that Wednesday night's third and final presidential debate would be a crucial opportunity - and perhaps the last one - for the Arizona senator to change the course of a race that appears to be moving strongly in Democrat Barack Obama's direction.

But the consensus ended there. For just about every Republican urging McCain to focus relentlessly on the economy, there was another who said McCain should continue questioning Obama's character by citing his association with William Ayers, a Vietnam-era radical. Some said the GOP nominee needed to do both, and also bring up the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., Obama's controversial former pastor; others called that a mistake and said that a mix of messages was part of McCain's problem.

It now appears that McCain will raise Obama's relationship to Ayers in tomorrow's debate.

I'm one those who've been disappointed in McCain's aversion to attacking Obama's radical ties, although I understand the reasoning: McCain's been searching for the right approach that balances toughness and the bounds of decency (for fear of being labeled "racist").

It's been a difficult process, and it may be too late in many respects, at least on Ayers and ACORN.

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright is another story, however. Obama was badly damaged by viral videos and revelations of his pastor's fire-and-brimstone anti-Americanism. If McCain wants to get serious about attacking the Illinois Senator's questionable associations, Wright's the ticket. Obama admitted a close friendship to his pastor, and he attended Trinity United Church for close to two decades.

Stanley Kurtz, who's done more than anyone else to reveal the extent of Barack Obama's radical associations, has a new report indicating that Obama's relationship to Wright was more significant than previously reported - that from Wright, to Ayers, and the Annenberg Challenge, Barack Obama's radicalism can be seen as a set-piece of funding, planning, and indoctrination.

Can this be the October Surprise?

It looks like Jeremiah Wright was just the tip of the iceberg. Not only did Barack Obama savor Wright’s sermons, Obama gave legitimacy — and a whole lot of money — to education programs built around the same extremist anti-American ideology preached by Reverend Wright. And guess what? Bill Ayers is still palling around with the same bitterly anti-American Afrocentric ideologues that he and Obama were promoting a decade ago. All this is revealed by a bit of digging, combined with a careful study of documents from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the education foundation Obama and Ayers jointly led in the late 1990s.

John McCain, take note. Obama’s tie to Wright is no longer a purely personal question (if it ever was one) about one man’s choice of his pastor. The fact that Obama funded extremist Afrocentrists who shared Wright’s anti-Americanism means that this is now a matter of public policy, and therefore an entirely legitimate issue in this campaign.

Read the whole thing.

Barack Obama's ties to anti-American pedagogists and extremist black-separatists are not insignificant.

For John McCain, in looking for a comeback, he need look no further than Barack Obama's long history of funding and empowering groups who would denounce the U.S. as an "ineradicably racist Eurocentric civilization."

Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times

Obama Plays Race Card as More Blacks Are Elected

The New York Times has an important article up tonight, the implications of which will be dismissed by those who insist on making allegations of racism against those who speak critically of Barack Obama.

As the Times reports, black officials in state governments across the country are steadily working their way to successful careers in politics, and the remarkable change here is that white majority constituencies are supporting them:

Political analysts say [black] electoral gains are quietly changing the political landscape, increasing the number of black lawmakers adept at crossing color lines as well as the ranks of white voters who are familiar, and increasingly comfortable, with black political leadership.

The black officials, who often serve in small- and medium-size towns, have been overshadowed by the presidential candidacy of Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, who if elected would be the first African-American to hold that office.

But over the last 10 years, about 200 black politicians have won positions once held by whites in legislatures and city halls in states like New Hampshire, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina and Tennessee.

In 2007, about 30 percent of the nation’s 622 black state legislators represented predominantly white districts, up from about 16 percent in 2001, according to data collected by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a research group based in Washington that has kept statistics on black elected officials for nearly 40 years.

Political scientists and local officials also point to an increase in the number of black mayors who represent predominantly white cities in places like Asheville, N.C., population 74,000, and Columbus, Ohio, population 748,000. According to a study conducted by Zoltan L. Hajnal, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, about 40 percent of Americans have lived in or near cities that have elected black mayors or in states with black governors.

According to the report, black office-seekers still represent primarily minority communities, but the statistics indicate a startling transformation toward color-blind political representation across large segments of the nation.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama's campaign has made systematic use of racial allegations to propel a candidacy that at one time based its appeal on post-racial transcendence.

Mark Levin has more on this, and the contrast between objective black progress and opportunistic race-baiting is just astounding:

Barack Obama's campaign has managed to paint Geraldine Ferraro, Bill Clinton, John McCain, and Sarah Palin as racists. Meanwhile, how dare anyone suggest that Obama's voluntary association with a racist pastor for 20 years, and his lame defense of the association, raises character questions.

Will the lib media be upset if we quote Aristotle, whose insight seems useful in this context?

"Those, then, are friends to whom the same things are good and evil; and those who are, moreover, friendly or unfriendly to the same people; for in that case they must have the same wishes, and thus by wishing for each other what they wish for themselves, they show themselves each other's friends." (Aristotle, Rhetoric, Book II, Chapter)

We choose our own friends and associates. And this is significant in Obama's case in particular as we are trying to get a sense of who he is and what informs him. Obama is asking the nation to honor him with its highest office. Yet, during most of his adulthood, he has befriended some of the worst kind of people — many of whom detest the nation Obama seeks to lead. And when combined with Obama's own extremism on issue after issue (is there a left-wing position he does not embrace?), there can be no doubt that an Obama administration working with a Democrat majority in Congress will fundamentally alter the nation's character in ways that will be very difficult to unravel.

America's commitment to color-blind equality, a commitment ironically confirmed by Obama's own nomination as the Democratic Party nominee, is one key area of public policy that will undergo transformation.

Strangely, the wheels of progress on race relations will likely grind to a halt, as a Democratic administration - with majorities in Congress - seeks to roll back race-neutral policies in areas of civil rights, education, and voting, with the likely result being the very kind of racial backlash against which Obama and his Democratic allies now decry.