Panic like methamphetamines runs rampant through the liberal bloodstream of op-eds and blogs, as poll numbers seem to indicate a bigger bounce for McCain after his convention than Obama after his; rising numbers of white women are seen skating to the hockey-mom's side; swing states are getting too close for comfort--and the result has been manic racing around shouting basically two things: The sky is falling!  The sky is falling!  (that's actually one thing), and Obama won't fight!  Why won't Obama FIGHT? (that's the other thing.)

I'm not the first to take notice of Richard Cohen's Washington Post piece this morning, "Too Cool to Fight?"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/08/AR2008090801909_pf.html

The first line of the column is, "Thank God for Sarah Palin."

Because geez, he goes on, Palin is the only thing that will unify Obama's base because he sure as hell can't do it.  She got 'em whipped up in a frenzy of fear, he says, and what does Obama do?  NOTHING:

"Not, anyway, the Obama who appeared Sunday on ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos. That Obama was cool, diffident, above it all -- unflustered, unflappable, unexcitable and downright unexciting. These "uns" ran on, a torrent of cool that frosted my flat-panel TV and had me wondering if, as a kid, Obama ever got a shot in the mouth on the playground, he'd glare at the bully -- and convene a meeting.

"Stephanopoulos vainly tried for some genuine reaction. In choosing Palin, did John McCain get someone who met the minimum test of being "capable of being president"? Everyone in America knows the answer to that. They know McCain picked someone so unqualified she has been hiding from the media because a question to her is like kryptonite to what's-his-name. But did Obama say anything like that? Here are his exact words: "Well, you know, I'll let you ask John McCain when he's on ABC." Boy, Palin will never get over that."


Oh, my.

But you see, I saw that interview, too.

What I saw was a 20-minute sit-down interview at the top of the broadcast between the show's host, George Stephanopolous, and Sen. Barack Obama, Democratic nominee for president.

And then, what I saw was a 40-minute (or however long, minus commercials) program that followed, in which the mostly conservative panel discussed two things, egged on by Stephanopolous:  how wonderful John McCain was in his prisoner-of-war video and speech and, how wonderful Sarah Palin was.

They did not even mention the interview with Barack Obama. 

It was as if the interview had not even existed on Stephanopolous's own show.

Clearly, they did not want to talk about Obama that day, and I don't care whether he'd said, "I predict the world will end in two weeks and only purple polka-dotted people will survive"--the narrative for the star-struck Stephanopolous was that the Republican ticket was swoon-worthy.

Noted, too, was the brazen lack of progressive panelists.  There was George Will (need I say more), David Brooks, (conservative columnist for the New York Times), and a couple of journalists who seemed as spellbound as the rest of them on the surface delights of the warrior/princess ticket.

There were, in fact, no Democratic party spokespersons or Obama supporters at all on that panel.

During the interview, when Stephanopolous had asked Obama, repeatedly, whether he thought Sarah Palin was qualified enough on any front to be president, there is a very calculated reason why Obama refused to be drawn into the question.

He said it himself, the first time he was asked:

"I'm not running against Sarah Palin.  I'm running against John McCain."

Obama knows that if he tries to answer leading questions from journalists on whether or not Palin is qualified, they will immediately counter with McCainsian questions about his OWN qualifications or perceived lack thereof. 

Their attempt will not be to get his ANSWER on the question; their aim will be to STIR UP A DEBATE with Obama on who's more qualified?

Him or Sarah?

And, contrary to popular opinion, Sarah Palin is not running for president.

Yes, she could BECOME the president at any time once McCain is elected, but it is Obama's job to see to it that such a scenario never happens in the first place, isn't it?

Well?

And Obama knows that, right now, even though the press and pundits and bloggers and op-edders are racing around the barnyard squawking about everything from Sarah Palin's thousand-dollar eyeglass frames to Sarah Palin's media mythology...the bottom line is:

How will any of this effect your life?

Will it help you hold on to your home?

Will it help you hang on to your job?

Will it help you pay for gas to get to work?

Will it keep you safe from terrorists cooking up plots in caves halfway around the world?

Will it protect your children from lead in their toys and poison in their toothpaste?

Will it prevent this planet from burning itself up?

Will it provide alternative fuel sources that might wean us from the Saudis and the Iranians?

Will it permit exhausted, dragged-out, enervated military families to hope that, at long last, their loved ones will come home?

It's the ISSUES, stupid.

We're not electing a beauty queen or a PTA president, here.  We are electing a team to govern the most powerful nation in the world, to address the most pressing issues of the past 50 years.

How long before the American public will tire of this popularity contest and start wondering whether a re-elected Republican administration will make it possible for them to heat their homes AND buy food, when, for the past eight years, their ability to do so has grown more perilous by the year?

Frank Schaeffer is one of my favorite HuffingtonPost.com bloggers.  His father, Francis Schaeffer, was the founding father of the modern Religious Right, and for many years, Frank was their darling.  Shocked at what he saw as the hubris and hypocrisy of people claiming to know God's will for our nation, he left the movement, and is now an avid Obama supporter.

No one knows this mind-set better than Schaeffer, and he cuts right through the muck to get to the heart of what they're trying to do, and how we as Democrats should respond the most effectively.

Today, he posted this:  "MisCalculation on McCain-Plain Will Cost the Election."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/miscalculation-on-mccainp_b_125044.html

Schaeffer points out the danger of the Republican ticket, in that, both candidates consider themselves victims and martyrs--McCain, a martyr of an elitist liberal media and college professorate that he believes ended the Vietnam war dishonorably; and Palin a martyr of big-city snobbery she believes looks down their noses at poor little ole country folk from remote, low-population states.

Both victimhood narratives are highly dangerous and effective, Schaeffer writes, and he warns Democrats not to allow themselves to be caught up in them:

So please don't think that by simply mocking the McCain/Palin ticket you have somehow "taken care of business." These are people and their followers are folks with a martyrdom complex and they revel in and are fed by, mockery. Rather somehow, we have to get to the issue of this election back to the issues.  (emphasis Schaeffer's)

The issue is not the personality of the candidates but the personality of our country. America is rapidly turning into a self-absorbed, semiliterate, anti-education, anti-science, anti-intellectual bastion of we're-proud-we're-dumb-as-shit, know-nothing Bible-thumping reaction. Stay on this path and we're doomed.

If Democrats, independents and thoughtful Republicans can't somehow make the issue of this election the issues that actually confront our country-the economy, a wrong war, the torture of prisoners, the decline of education, the destruction of our military, the warming of our planet, the fumbling of the war on terror, the total failure of our energy policy-instead of simply firing late-night-style stand-up shots in the culture wars, we will lose this election. Correction: America will lose.


Shaeffer has hit the nail on the head that Obama has tried so calmy and consistently to hammer into the American consciousness:

Could it be that, for viewers of Sunday's program, rather than be entertained by the Stephanopolous roundtable discussion on the merits of a vice-president who could field-dress a deer while wearing heels and a president who could wring a tear from the most patriotic eye...

Could it be that they were maybe FRUSTRATED because nobody ever talked about the things that are worrying Americans the most right now, and the list is lengthy?

Obama continues to talk about the things worrying Americans.  He refuses to be dragged into a fake debate on false issues that have absolutely nothing to do with our daily lives.  He doggedly persists in discussing the economy, the war in Iraq, climate change, education, health care, and job creation.

Oh yeah, it's not "exciting," to quote Cohen.

But it is real life.

This campaign is not a reality show.

It's not a call-in popularity contest.

It's not a soap opera.

It's not a buy-one, get-one-free flag infomercial.

It is a pivotal moment in American history, when, for the first time in years, the American people hold within their hands the ability to make their own lives better.

Bottom line:  Who's going to make it better? 

The guy who's talking about the job their wife lost and the war their son's fighting in and the house they're struggling to hold on to?

Or the crusty old war hero with the pretty trophy running mate who offer vague promises of "change" even though their own party has been in power for the better part of 30 years?

Democrats, I know you are scared, especially if, like Cohen, you were once a Hillary supporter and miss her spunk and feistiness.  I know you're afraid Obama will turn into Al Gore or John Kerry--imminently qualified but too boring for the electorate.

But Gore ran for president after Bill Clinton had left the country in pretty good shape but had exhausted it emotionally.  Americans were ripe for right-wing manipulating.

And John Kerry ran against a self-described war president in time of war, and if you will remember, back then, "Swift-Boat" was not a verb, like it is now.

Have you noticed how, the guy who launched the whole Swift-Boat campaign with his hateful book and ads in 2004, effectively costing Kerry the election, tried to do it to Obama all over again?

Has it stuck?

Has Corsi's narrative taken over the dialogue?  Has he been taken seriously by the mainstream media?

He did, the first time.

But that was then.  This is now.  He was quickly dispatched as a fraud and a partisan phony (even FOX news corrected him several times on-air) and the media moved on.

It's a whole new world now.

I worry too, sometimes, about the War Hero and the Beauty Queen, mainly because the pundits and pontificators have such transparent crushes on them, and after all, people voted for Dubya, didn't they?  (Remember the headline on a major British newspaper after the last presidential election: How Can 58 Million People Be So Dumb?)

But give it time.

As we speak, every single major print news outlet has begun to debunk the multiple falsehoods that make up the Palin mythology machine.  Obama himself is running numerous ads to that effect.  It is only a matter of time before the TV talkers catch on. 

Even George Stephanopolous.

And when the American public wakes up and realizes that the rainmaker they idolized is actually a flim-flam man...they'll start to ask the tough questions, and to notice that, of the two candidates, only one had the answers...all along.

As one commenter to Shaeffer's post said, more of them will "wake up and smell the sulfur."

Remember the tortoise and the hare?

Give him time.