This Campaign Will Self Destruct In 10 Seconds
Posted at 10:02pm on Apr. 12, 2008 I Promise I'll Stop Writing About This Eventually . . .
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
But issues concerning Barack Obama's recent comments just keep springing to mind. Consider his side comment about "anti-immigrant" sentiments that he attributes to people in small towns who "get bitter." Now, to be sure, xenophobia certainly has been known to increase in tenor and pitch when hard economic times come about. But as I and others have argued, if we are talking about the controversy surrounding our current immigration policies, we have to acknowledge the fact that concerns regarding those policies do not merely exist because of hard economic times. Immigration policy has always been a hot-button issue. It was a hot-button issue while the economic expansion was going on in full force during the Bush Presidency. It was a hot-button issue when the Reagan Administration offered amnesty for illegal immigrants if only those immigrants declare themselves (the economy was growing quite nicely then too and people felt very good about the direction of the country and their own personal fortunes).
Moreover, as with the issue of trade, Obama shows a strange tendency to accuse others of sins he is primarily guilty of. He decries as most unfortunate the fact that the unwashed masses might become protectionists in hard economic times, even as he opposes free trade in general and NAFTA and the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement in particular. And when it comes to the issue of immigrants--or more generally, the Other--Obama is more than willing to stoke resentments even as he pronounces the existence of those resentments as sorrowful and regrettable.
Remember this? It contained the following passage:
. . . This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.
Just out of curiosity, if a candidate for the Presidency goes out of his way to rhetorically stoke fears that the foreigners are out to get your livelihood, would said candidate be rightfully described as "bitter"?
Or is it all right for Barack Obama to play on fears of the Other even as he (rightfully) decries such fears when it comes to our attitudes towards immigrants?
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Posted at 9:54pm on Apr. 12, 2008 More On The Obama Comments
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
This is pretty much devastating. And the last line is well taken. In the event that this needs pointing out, people are piling on from all portions of the ideological spectrum. And yes, it is unbelievable that one of the two candidates to have made a virtue out of being a protectionist is now sneering at the protectionism of others. I too wonder whether Senator Obama really believes his own protectionist message. If so, he is woefully misinformed. If not, he is misleading the very people he wants to lead.
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Posted at 2:55pm on Apr. 12, 2008 The Obama Campaign Forgets The First Rule Of Holes
By Pejman Yousefzadeh
Let's all focus again on the comment Senator Obama made concerning people in small towns:
"So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or antitrade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations," Mr. Obama said, according to a transcript on the Huffington Post Web site, which first published the remarks on Friday.
Several points:
- Unlike the McCain "100 years" controversy, this current brouhaha is based on an entirely accurate reading of comments made by a Presidential candidate and the context in which those comments were made.
- People don't endorse Second Amendment rights or adhere to their faith merely because of economic problems. To say that they do and to reduce belief in religion and/or the Second Amendment to economic deprivation is just nothing short of silly and foolish beyond belief.
- I am sure that there are xenophobes involved in the debate over immigration policy. But of course, not everyone is a xenophobe and not everyone has xenophobic reasons for being concerned about the state of our immigration policies (this comes from someone who believes that we ought to have a liberal immigration policy to the degree possible and whose family benefited mightily from such a policy).
- Saying that people "cling" to beliefs is not exactly the best way to show respect for their intellects or for the nature of their worldviews--worldviews that perhaps outstrip Senator Obama's in terms of coherence and subtlety.
- This does not help:
Of course, we all know that CNN is in the tank for Obama and we know that Jack Cafferty is a moron--especially when it comes to his outlandishly foolish statements concerning trade policy. But never mind that for a moment. Note instead the comments made around the 3:10 mark. Evidently, Cafferty and CNN have chosen to defend Obama by arguing that if economic conditions continue the way they are going, the small-town hicks of America could eventually become something akin to al Qaeda terrorists.
And the Obama campaign sent this out in order to defend Obama's comments.
Just let that sink in.
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