You know one of the things I love about Barack Obama is how cool he is. No, not cool as in hip (although sure he's that),
but cool as in cool as a cucumber.
Clearly he has shown throughout this campaign he has the temperament that will serve him well as commander-in-chief.
THAT SAID...
as I look at my 401k yesterday and see that it has lost EIGHT PERCENT of its value in the last year without ME taking any money out of it and I find out my employer can't afford to give me a raise this year during a review and I see the government bailing out all these stupid mortgage lenders when I am a college-educated apartment dweller making $30,000 a year who is wondering if she will EVER be able to afford a home...
I'm not cool as a cucumber right now. In fact I'm hot. You could say I'm FIRED UP actually.
But not FIRED UP by the audacity of HOPE. I'm FIRED UP by the audacity of GREED. I'm FIRED UP because the scale and scope of this GREED has me PASSIONATELY MORALLY OUTRAGED at this abominable sin. And I, and the American people, need to know that Barack Obama is too!
Yeah, I know, I've heard it before that Barack Obama can't be TOO passionate because he's always got to be wary of being portrayed as the angry black man. I get it. And usually I agree with it.
But I tell you what. This campaign CAN strike a better balance between whatever empathetic optimistic steady hand leadership they are trying to project with ads like this:
It can and it must. Because this ad doesn't at all tap into the ANGER and FRUSTRATION people like me feel at how disconnected John McCain and the Republicans are and just how culpable they are for bungling up what they were handed by Bill Clinton 8 years ago.
Now unlike much of the electorate I don't vote primarily based on emotion or feeling, but on rational political thought on the issues. But even voters like me who have been with Barack from the beginning are dying to see not just that he's heard my concerns, but that he's INTERNALIZED them. That, to use the Bill Clinton line, "I feel your pain." I need to know that restoring the American economy is Barack Obama's PASSION. I need to know he's MORALLY OUTRAGED by the problem that caused all of this: GREED.
I don't just want a reminder that coming out of Columbia he turned down a job down on Wall Street to help folks who lost their jobs when the steel mills closed. I don't just want a reminder that he expanded the earned income tax credit or health care in Illinois. I don't just want to hear what he wants to do to give middle class tax relief and regulate Wall Street. Every day on the stump I want to hear him explain why and explain how with PASSION.
It's great Obama is in position to claim the moral ground in the conduct of his campaign and projected such a positive message throughout. It's great the facts are on his side. It's great he can give 40-minute addresses on the economy with thoughtful policies and prescriptions and a clear philosophical repudiation of Reaganomics causing the "pain to trickle up" that my liberal heart swooned over when he delivered it at the Democratic National Convention.
But for some reason this ad and some of his speeches just feel now a bit detached and professorial to me. And you know what professors do? They put people to sleep. Especially economics professors. I know mine in college sure did.
Which is all too unfortunate because for the reasons Dennis Kucinich so brilliantly articulated at the Democratic National Convention, America needs to WAKE UP.
I must confess, until the past couple of weeks, I really didn't pay much attention to the economic situation right now because I've been so caught up in the presidential campaign and so little of our campaign has had to do with the economy really.
But something clicked for me on Monday. It was seeing this from Kos on Monday:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
The week of January 22, 2001, the first of Bush's presidency, the Dow averaged 10,659. Today, it closed at 10,917.
And then it was hearing about how Wall Street is crashing now because the lack of regulation there and then educating myself on the role that Phil "nation of whiners" Gramm had in it.
And then it was educating myself about this man, McCain's closest economic advisor and still potential Treasury Secretary Phil Gramm who:
- worked hand-in-hand with John McCain to lead the charge to defeat Hillary Clinton's proposal for universal healthcare under President Clinton
- singlehandledly stopped legislation BEFORE 9/11 that the Clinton administration tried to pass that would have let them closer investigate foreign investments so they could track the activity of the terrorist money laundering networks
- collected huge campaign cash from Enron in order to totally take away any govt. regulations on them while his wife sat on their board collecting a couple million dollars before the whole thing collapsed
- collected huge campaign cash from the rest of Wall Street in order to take away govt. regulations on the financial industry that have led to the current subprime mortgage meltdown
- went to work as an executive and lobbyist in the banking industry to fight for MORE deregulation after leaving the Senate in 2002
And then after seeing the stock market plummet it was me checking out my 401k to see it plummet in worth knowing I can't afford to contribute any more to retirement right now because my salary isn't going up this year.
And then I see $85 million of our tax money used to bailout AIG, after having just bailed out Bear Stearns and Fannie and Freddie.
And then I come to the realization that my 401k losing all this money actually means that I was PAYING FOR GOLDEN PARACHUTES for these boneheaded, drunk on greed executives with my 401k and now I have to bail out the companies that chose to put those boneheaded, drunk on greed executives in charge with my tax dollars.
And then I see Jim Kramer railing so brilliantly on the current crisis on MSNBC and blasting the failures of the SEC Chairman to reign in the short selling that is driving down all these stocks.
And I see nothing to explain or excuse the AUDACITY OF GREED that has caused this crisis.
And even if Barack Obama doesn't have an explanation for it because there is not and even if he doesn't have a specific prescription beyond stricter regulations on Wall Street because so much is still unknown then at the very least I want to see Barack Obama shares my sense of passionate moral indignation at the sinful greed exhibited by the lobbyists and CEOs and woeful negligence of oversight exhibited by John McCain and his Republican friends.
While it's great that Barack Obama gets the systematic and structural problems with the economy, for me to believe and not just hope he can successfully bring the change we need, I must know he doesn't just understand the problems, that he isn't just listening to the problems, but that he's internalized them.
I have. And it's why I'm a Democrat.