Hey, Barack, Hillary Only Suspended Her Campaign

Original Link: http://www.newmediajournal.us/staff/fsalvato/2008/08012008.htm

By Frank Salvato

In the turbulent wake left by Barack Obama’s world tour – his campaign to be loved by all, less a significant percentage of the American people – it seems something has slipped the minds of David Axelrod and David Plouffe; Hillary Clinton didn’t quit her campaign, she suspended it. This becomes increasingly significant as more Americans – more Democrats, Progressive-Leftists and especially Democrat superdelegates – realize that Barack Obama is less about substance and more about marketing; more about “flash.”

In light of the shameful snubbing Barack Obama inflicted upon the wounded US military personnel at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, it is painfully clear that he is not the candidate of “change.” If anything he is this election cycle’s version of the status quo; a hybrid of inflated rhetoric and Madison Avenue glitz. He offers hollow bumper-sticker catchphrase solutions (“yes we can,” “hope,” and “change”) to political, social and ideological problems he is ill-equipped to address professionally. This is the typical trade-craft of a political operative possessing an extremely limited political resume.

Those not blinded by the “bright, shiny thing” – the distractions of the hollow rhetoric and media marketing – understand that Obama is a political creation of the Chicago Democrat Machine; the Chicago Daley Machine. He is a slickly choreographed media tool meant to reinvent the image of the Democrat Party for the 21st Century. The first clue to this reality is the fact that his main campaign handler (some would say “puppet master”) is David Axelrod, a longtime strategist for Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who fancies himself a “strategist in urban politics.” More recently, proof of the Chicago connection can be seen in the fact that the DNC moved a major portion of its operations to Chicago.

Truth be told, an investigative reporter for a junior high school newspaper could divine the fact that while Obama’s marketing team has successfully packaged the candidacy of Barack Obama as the “secular second-coming,” he is, truthfully, just another product – another political operative – of the Chicago political machine. Even for the dead who routinely vote in Chicago this comes as no surprise. But there is something taking everyone by surprise – even the dead in Chicago: Barack Obama is starting to buy into the facade created by his marketing gurus.

Former Bush political genius, Karl Rove, was perhaps the first strategist to recognize Obama’s Achilles heal: vanity. Obama’s arrogance grew as he rose through the primary field to square off against Hillary Clinton – and then as he assumed (the operative word for this article) the mantle of Democrat nominee for president. At first his arrogance came off as confidence, as good self-esteem, a quality that attracted the Liberal electorate. But as his arrogance grew, as his adoring masses nurtured his politically naïve belief that one politician, one elected official, can singularly change the everyday working of inside-the-beltway politics, that arrogance and misplaced confidence started to feed the beast of ego.

Obama’s ego exploded onto the world, witness his recent closed-door meeting with Congressional Democrats:

“...this is the moment, as Nancy [Pelosi] noted, that the world is waiting for... I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions... It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign -- that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It's about America. I have just become a symbol...”

As Obama’s ego grows, so does the budding discontent within his base and his political party. The anti-war Left is critical of his flip-flopping on funding the war effort, his waffling on the immediate removal of troops from the Iraqi battle theater and his sudden dedication to committing troops to multiple battle theaters in the war against radical Islamists globally. The pro-Islamist/anti-national security/anti-capitalist Left is outraged by his vote on the retooled FISA law. The feminist Left is bitter – and rightly so – over his playing the race-card in his perceived defeat of Hillary Clinton, so much so that close to half of all female Hillary Clinton supporters are refusing to vote for him, opting instead to vote for the Center-Right John McCain. And as Obama’s ego grows, as his arrogance wafts increasingly from radios and televisions across the country...excuse me, around the world, more factions jump off the “Soul Train.”

Meanwhile, Barack Obama has pledged to help Hillary Clinton retire her campaign debt. He has enlisted her help in reaching out, not only to those Liberals and Progressive-Leftists disenfranchised by his “assumed” nomination, but to all Democrats. In doing so Obama has been singing Clinton’s praises, handing her compliments and touting her achievements. Obama has embraced Hillary Clinton as the quintessential candidate would he not be the “symbol” he has become and he has done so before locking up the Democrat nomination; before the convention; before it is all “official”; before the superdelegates have committed their votes.

We’ve all heard the old adage that one should go to the funerals of their foes, if only to make sure the body is in the coffin as it is being lowered into the ground.

Should Barack Obama continue his slide into ego’s abyss, his campaign of arrogance, naively buying his own marketing scheme, should he continue to alienate the loose association of factions that make up the total of his base, he risks fiddling as his Rome burns; he risks facilitating the migration of superdelegates from his candidacy to Hillary Clinton’s. Remember, she suspended her campaign, she didn’t end it.

Should this scenario occur it would not only usurp “Dewey Defeats Truman” as the biggest media failure in American history, it would create a solid field of Leftist support for Hillary Clinton. Liberal and Progressive-Left feminists will be drunk with determination. Those who defected from her camp originally will work twice as hard to make amends and prove their loyalty (come on, who is stupid enough to cross a Clinton in power?). Those who backed Obama will work twice as hard for Hillary to cleanse themselves of their political naivety. And Democrats in general will still have their “history making” event in the nomination of the first female nominee to head a national party ticket.

To put it succinctly, if Obama folds because of his arrogance, because of his ego, it will be twice as hard to stop Hillary Clinton from attaining the White House.