Which Side Are You On?

I suppose it’s the lackluster, quasi dementia driven campaign thus far presented to the republican hold-outs by Senator McCain that has made Barack Obama the center of everyone’s attention and comment. That is the upside. The downside is that every species of political talking-head currently occupying the airwaves is waiting for the other shoe to drop. “He is moving to the center”, “He is changing his position on the war”, “He is voting for the FISA bill”, and all of this, of course, couched in the mean-spirited iron-jawed stupidity that most times frames the media pundit’s commentary. This is obviously directed at the lowest-common-denominator audience that craves blood, not caring whose blood, even if it turns out to be their own.
It is clear that Senator Obama has to reach a much broader demographic than he did during the primary. It is also plain as the nose on Cyrano’s face that he has taken on a responsibility that no other candidate with so much to offer has ever shouldered without the help of special interest groups: He wants to actually win the election.
Has anyone ever met a person with whom he or she agrees on every detail of every issue? I doubt it. That is the stuff of superficiality. I usually disagree more with the people that I agree with, than with those to whom I am diametrically opposed. Makes sense, doesn’t it?
Anyone who didn’t know, from square one, that Senator Obama is a politician is in dire need of an industrial-strength shot of reality. That is what makes this presidential race so exciting: HE CAN REALLY WIN. But, in order to do that, he has to represent, to the degree that such a thing is humanly possible, all of the people of this country, and not just the left, or the right, or the center, or the above-ground, or the below-ground. This means, with a nod to the obvious, that uniting a polarized and stratified society cannot be done by any particular stratum. This is the task he has set himself. And if it were anyone else, I wouldn’t believe it possible. He has his work cut out, that is for sure. But if anyone can, I suspect he is the one.
If he does clinch the election he will inherit an economy on the verge of a collapse that rivals 1929, a war that was ill-conceived, poorly planned and just plain wrong from the get go, a society that is profoundly divided so as to facilitate the lives of corporate thieves, against whose wrath he will have to defend himself both before and after the election.
In order for there to be real change the agent of change must be in a position to effect said transformation. All else is idle hope and vain wish. For the first time we have the opportunity to at least begin to undo the damage caused by the republican regimes of late. Let’s not blow it because of the lack of vision and greed of the media: they need to talk about something. Perhaps their time would be better spent looking into the insanity that is being proposed by John McCain.
It’s only fair to ask you, boys, which side are you on?