I think I know what the storyline of Terminator: Salvation is. At it’s core, it’s Aeschylus’s myth of ‘Prometheus’, as the movie’s director McG unveiled here some time ago. But there’s a twist: instead of using the Greek Aeschylus’s original, the writers have turned to the version of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and likely also threw in parts from ‘Frankenstein’, written by Mary Shelley, Percy’s wife. Be aware, though: what follows, probably contains spoilers.
The pregnancy of Bristol Palin, McCain’s vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s daughter, will not affect the race. If anything, it will remind some independent-minded mothers of their own teen pregnancies (or their daughters’), and will only bond them to soon-to-be grandmother Palin. But it will probably also turn off a comparable number of christian wingnuts, so in the end, no win-no lose.
(The ‘QUICK’ is a new feature, to offer an opinion on a matter in a fast way. You will be seeing more of these. It’s sort of neo-Twitter – which is cool, and why? Because any word with the keyword ‘neo’ in front of it, is hot!)
The pick of Alaska governor Sarah Palin to the veep-slot of John McCain is what you might call a “gamble”. Republicans, of course, relieved that finally McCain’s campaign has gotten some positive mojo in the media for 48 hours straight, are calling Palin’s pick “fantastic”, “briliant”, “excellent”, etcetera. Team Obama has been remarkably careful in its initial response, and so has Hillary Clinton. They seem to be careful not to attack Palin too hard, as independent older women form one of the demographic groups that this year will decide the election.
Yet there’s enough to make those women growl about Palin.
I never thought very highly of James Carville. The Democratic strategist and ‘political critic’ in my view boasts a big Cajun mouth, but he never really achieved that much. The Bill Clinton presidency? If Ross Perot hadn’t taken in all those Bush-votes in ’92, Clinton would very likely still have been governor of Arkansas. And Carville knows this. But he has for the past 48 hours been bashing the Democratic Convention in Denver for not rolling out a Central Message. And he’s dead on.
Back from my holidays in Morocco and Spain (it was fun, thank you – we sorta followed the ‘Moorish Trail’), and lo and behold! Barack Obama no longer seems to be in the lead. As the electoral college polls over at the (pro-GOP) Realclearpolitics.com and (more neutral) Fivethirtyeight.com websites show, John McCain has closed the gap. Obama needs to get worried.
The reasons why Obama is losing? It ain’t rocket science:
In short, the four reasons that have been toiling in the back of my head ever since Obama became the Democratic candidate-in-waiting.
There’s a strategy in nuclear war, believe it or not, that’s called Bravo-Romeo-Delta. The B stands for ‘blunting’, R for ‘retardation’, and D for ‘disrupting’. A blunting attack means that you’re trying to blunt the opposition’s capacity to strike you, retardation means you’re trying to take out your opponent’s communication infrastructure, and disruptive means you’re going all-out, in an effort to destroy your opponent’s means to conduct war. The Delta-stage is usually the last, and most destructive phase of nuclear conflict.
Over at RealClearPolitics, the GOP-leaning Tom Bevan looks at Barack Obama’s chances in getting 7 ‘red states’ to come over to his column. Bevan doubts that Obama’s strategy will work. But that’s beside the point. Obama’s campaign team is trying to ‘Bravo-Romeo-Delta’ the McCain team all at once. And the reason is that Obama simply has more money to buy ammunition, and the timeframe to do it.
Why so serious, indeed. Because there’s not a whole lot to be serious about when it comes to ‘Batman: The Dark Knight’, the latest instalment in the Batman franchise, made by director Christopher Nolan. It’s a fun movie, but not a very good one. In fact, if Heath Ledger hadn’t been in it to freewheel as a psychopath, this movie would have been a disaster, as the last 30 minutes of it prove.
Yesterday, I wrote an article called ‘Deconstructing Obama’. In it, I gave a very short rundown of the only strategy that seems to be left to McCain: go personal. The reason being that Obama has had the initiative since day one, it seems.
But perhaps I was wrong. The tracking polls are starting to show dents in Obama’s armour. Over at Real Clear Politics (I’m always careful with these guys as they’re clearly pro-GOP), the latest rundown of tracking polls shows that although Obama is still leading, the margins seem to be getting smaller, not bigger.
That spells trouble for Obama. Of course, Americans being Americans, I would not be surprised if they once again elect someone who will tear their country even further apart. Because that’s what Republicans do: they pretend to be all Christian morals, but before you know it, they’re out with TV-ads calling people traitors and sodomizing your 3-year-old.
Either way, Obama has not yet been able to close the deal and I’m afraid that that’s because people are still very doubtful of him. Of course, American pigheads being American pigheads, they keep noticing that Obama is black. Perhaps that’s it. It can’t be because of ideological reasons. Because how many average Americans read candidate platforms these days?
I‘ve said from day one, so even before the primaries, that Americans were very capable of electing a carbon copy of George W Bush into office. I also predicted that the election would be very close.
When the new King of Expectation beat the Oracle of Chappaqua, I said I was convinced that any generic Republican would win the election. Now, I’m going back to that position. I’ll be keeping it until Obama truly starts improving his poll numbers and significantly moves away from McCain.
John McCain is on the offensive, and for all the wrong reasons. He has to find a way to dent Obama’s armor. For all intents and purposes, Obama is able to keep the initiative, constantly forcing his adversary to react and take on a defensive position. He is almost constantly asked by the media to respond to new Obama ploys.
In an effort to break that spell, McCain seems to have started a new offensive, directly attacking Obama’s persona. That puts him right where team Obama wants him. Unless something odd happens: if this continues, Obama will win the election.
John Nichols of thenation.com is getting a bit infatuated with Barack Obama. That’s fine, a lot of journalists are being sucked in. John McCain should stop bitching about it – he was yesterday’s sweetheart for a long time, but that’s what he is. Yesterday’s news, just like Hillary Clinton was.
So it was refreshing to see Nichols criticizing Obama for a change in an article pasted here, but unfortunately, Nichols missed the mark. He was right to criticize Obama, but for the wrong reason.
Both Barack Obama and John McCain are right: more troops are needed in Afghanistan, but with one unifying mandate, not two different ones that cancel each other out. As is currently the case.
So I wrote Mr Nichols an email. To which he didn’t respond, of course.