Now that the rigged evangelical forum fiasco, where McCain showed his lack of integrity, is over, there remain a number of questions.  Why did Obama waste his time?   Why hasn't the Obama campaign caught on to the Rovian McCain tactics and become stongly pro-active and tough rather than appearing only defensive and reactive?

 

Hope doesn't mean being naive. Doesn't Obama realize he can't trust McSame or has he been lulled into a dangerously mistaken "collegial" mind set as a member of the exclusive Senate 100 club?

 

As Paul Krugman points out in his latest column in the NYTimes: " [Obama] and his surrogates need to going for the jugular not the capillaries." 

 

Krugman hits the nail on the head with this, too: "I was astonished at the flatness of the big economy speech he gave in St. Petersburg at the beginning of this month” a speech that was billed as the start of a new campaign focus on economic issues. Mr. Obama is a great orator, yet he began that speech with a litany of statistics that were probably meaningless to most listeners.

"Worse yet, he seemed to go out of his way to avoid scoring political points. "Back in the 1990s," he declared, "your incomes grew by $6,000, and over the last several years, they've actually fallen by nearly $1,000." Um, not quite: real median household income didn't rise $6,000 during the 1990s, it did so during the Clinton years, after falling under the first Bush administration. Income hasn't fallen $1,000 in "recent years," it's fallen under George Bush, with all of the decline taking place before 2005."  (Underlines added.)

An editorial in The Nation always provides more context: "Obama, under pressure to avoid appearing "liberal," errs too frequently on the side of caution. And becausepresidential candidates define the debate, Obama's populism deficit constrains Democrats even as Americans demand more than mere "hope." The Rockefeller/Time survey found almost 80 percent believe that the social contract they could once depend on has deteriorated and say they want a new one.

 

 

 

As David Sirota writes: "Labor Challenges Obama's Rubinomics:"

"From Bloomberg News:

Aug. 18 (Bloomberg) -- AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka delivers a slap at former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin in a slide show exhorting union members to back Democrat Barack Obama for president.

Blaming unfettered global trade and inadequate government regulation for lost manufacturing jobs and a staggering economy, Trumka's presentation cautions that "it will do us little good if, when the next Democrat moves into the White House, Wall Street takes command of our country's economic policy.''

"It is definitely good news that unions are speaking up, though not for the reason Washington conventional-wisdom parrot Charlie Cook says:

In the end, the competition for influence between laborites and Rubinites may actually prove politically helpful, says Charlie Cook, editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. "What you need is two loud voices in the room to keep Obama down the middle, which is where he needs to be to get elected,'' Cook says.

"This suggests that Rubinomics and its embrace of NAFTA-style trade policies has a mass political constituency, and that by echoing Rubinomic themes, a candidate appeals to that constituency. But polls - which Charlie Cook is paid to read - show exactly the opposite. No, there are not throngs of Americans clamoring for more of their jobs to be outsourced. Contrary to Cook's silliness, while up to Bob Rubin may make Obama friends among Washington and Wall Street elites, it doesn't help him win votes in places like Ohio, and doesn't move him into the political center - it helps him lose places like Ohio by moving him out of the center." 

Barack Obama should continuously lay the responsibility for the catastrophe this country is in at the feet of those who caused it, Bush and his administration, and those who support its continuation, McSame and company.  Obama needs to quit with the amorphous statements about the damage to this country and start naming Bush and McCain.  He must talk about why and how they did it, and how he plans to begin solving the enormous problems, not in a Niagara of pedantic statements but in a real dialogue with the people.

Obama needs to show the voters of this country more Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his fighting spirit and progressive policies and solutions and stop his erroneous channelling of Ronald Reagan who did nothing but inflict disaster on the US.   Can I get an AMEN?