Tuesday, April 01, 2008

What Democrats can do from now until November 4th

I understand that the contest between Obama and Clinton needs to run its course. That’s out of my hands. However, this morning Glenn Greenwald, who blogs for Salon.com at Unclaimed Territory, confirmed what I think we Democrats should be doing from now until the presidential election on November 4th. As Greenwald put it in this morning’s post, “…[I]f you want John McCain to not win, you have to start hitting him now, because the default position of the press toward John McCain is so positive that unless other candidates are actively and specifically going after him all the time, his free ride takes him right to the White House.”

Heck, if “other candidates” are supposed to go after him, shouldn’t we be doing that, too? Greenwald agrees, because he states that “…[A]nybody who has an interest in John McCain not becoming president, whether or not you support Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or Ralph Nader or anybody else in the race…” should “start hitting him [McCain] now.”

Fortunately, Greenwald has written a new book to help us. Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics. I ordered it this morning. In today’s post, Greenwald states, “An aggressive campaign to demonstrate how absurd and destructive are these right-wing leaders, how deceitful is the media's personality-based glorification of them, is absolutely necessary. The Right's militarism, authoritarianism, and moral preening are reflective of and are grounded in sickly weakness, not upstanding strength, and that case can be easily made if there is an effort to make it.

“That's the objective of this book-- to put these right-wing leaders under that same microscope and to apply the same standards to them -- the ones used successfully by them and their media allies to mock and destroy the personality and character of their opponents in order to win elections. Having the Right subjected to those same standards, and examining the media's central role in this process, is what is virtually never heard in the establishment press. A book about these themes which ends up succeeding and being widely read can force those arguments into the wider public discourse, which is where they need to be in order to be truly effective." [emphasis mine]

I already have 45 articles in my McCain computer folder. After I read Greenwald’s Great American Hypocrites, I’ll be ready to do everything I can to help prevent John McCain from being our next president. .

(book jacket from Amazon.com)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm happy to see you continue our work, Gail. If you're out and about this weekend, let me know. I am not available during the day on Saturday, but I'll be around Sunday (camera in hand).

Your March 22 post was great and the photo was heart-breaking. What has happened to us?

Go, Gail, go--we stand behind you!