KCRW's Left Right & Center 7/25/08: Obama Overseas, McCain Campaign, The Poll Truth, Mortgage Bill

To help answer the question why Obama is not doing better in the polls. No one trusts him. He says one thing and dose another. (saying the environment is important then he votes for Chainy's energy bill ). He has never explained his relationship with Tony Ressco, He launched his campaign for the IL state senate from the porch of leader of the weather underground, His largest contributor is the Ethanol lobby. He has zero foreign policy experience (photo ops do not constitute foreign policy experience). And he has never said how he is going to "bring about change" He has had almost two years to come up with a plan, so far nothing concrete. And if (and I mean if) elected who would be on his team??? He won't comment on his planned cabinet or anything that would be worth listening to him. I've been a Democrat since I could vote and I will not vote for the salesman of the century. I'm torn between voting for McCain or writing in Bill the Cat and Opus. My only hope is that the supper delegates come to their senses and vote for Clinton at the DNC. That is if given the opportunity to actually vote in a real democratic process.

How is it that nobody commented on the CBS interview which was edited to cover up a gaffe by McCain? How often are CBS's interviews, or any, edited to show only "answers" that paint the interviewee in a positive light, and to hide mistakes made in their answers?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/22/mccain-gets-history-of-th_n_114419.html

I alway learn from Mr. Scheer and respect his opinions and writings at Truthdig.

That's the main reason I look forward to this show every Friday since I learned of it on my local NPR station.

However, I must take exception to his remark on today's show that the New Yorker cover of July 21 is a terrible affront to Obama. Mr. Scheer went on to suggest that had the cover depicted LIeberman the New Yorker would be drumed out of business.

May I suggest in turn that Liberman has not been subjected to the callous slurs, childish schoolyard manglings of his name and parentage, the continuous calumnies of right-wing hate radio and broadcast media.

By taking the bull by the horns with the satircal cover New Yorker has deflated the outsized egos of the hot-air sunshine mendicants of the corporate oligarchy.

People who can not follow irony or satire are, I think, are generally the black and white fundamentalist bible pounders such as we have here in Oklahoma, but I know Mr. Scheer does not fall in that category.

Am I the only one to find Tony and Matt's take on the electorate's pulling back on Obama rather patronising?

Why is Obama doing poorly in the polls? Four words: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

You shouldn't underestimate the number of people who were alienated by that vote.

Democracy Now held a debate between Glenn Greenwald and Obama's advisor Cass Sunstein and I have to say that Sunstein's representation of Obama's position on FISA was nearly incomprehensible.

And I'm excited to see a black man--a constitutional scholar and civil rights lawyer who spent a few crucial formative years outside of the country--have a real chance at the presidency. He'd have to do a great deal to lose my vote.

But his positions on the issues that really matter to me do bring me closer.

Thank you all for providing such wonderful discussion.

I think we all seem to forget, at times, that media outlets are profit-maximizing companies.

I think we all seem to forget, at times, that media outlets are profit-maximizing companies. Now, not that I have anything wrong with this, I love profit-maximizing companies, but we shouldn't expect the media to act in any other way. Matter of fact, we must regard these outlets for simply behaving in a way to increase ratings, commercial revenue, and in turn, profit for shareholders.

To my point, Obama is certainly a more intriguing figure. I'm not necessarily a fan of his, but we on the right must at least concede that his story is more historical and he is more charismatic. Thus, people are more interested in watching coverage of him; we don't know much about him, his opinions (which are far from stagnant) and his family/story are just more intriguing to people. The media is simply giving the people what they want to see. Whether they vote for this guy or not is not the issue, but the general public is more likely to change the channel when they see McCain, Left Right or Center.

And I certainly take issue to the previous posts that argue they are covering Obama because he is in the 'lead,' many polls show a statistical tie. "The Media" is not huddling around waiting for the latest rasummussen poll, thats for sure. And we cannot hold the media to the unfair standard of being "fair" in their coverage - so lets just give up the idea that they are doing something 'right' or 'wrong' or 'unfair' because, at the end of the day, "The Media's" main objective is to MAKE MORE MONEY, not to give us some intellectual stimulation.

Re: Robert Scheer stated that “Republicans have brought us disaster, they betrayed conservatism, they’ve bankrupted our economy so there is a lot for a leftist, populist candidate to campaign on….we need to hear that voice from Obama.”

Mr. Scheer, I hope you get a chance to see Bill Moyers interview with Ernest Hollings.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07252008/watch3.html

Mr. Hollings talks about the perpetual campaign and how the Senate and the Congress need to spend so much time financing their campaigns, that there is no time left to work for the country. He also talks about the media and how they are not speaking the truth to Americans.

I hope these important issues can be discussed on LR&C.

Why is the race close? 1. Presidential elections are about bonding and Obama is not a bonding kind of guy. 2. Obama's ethnic background does not speak to the life stories of many Americans. How many second and third generation Americans still have a middle name from the old country and know the exclusion that would come from having that featured prominently, particularly if it were someone who lead a country America had two wars against. Kenya is not a place that most Americans relate to other than for distance runners and wildlife. 3. Race. Obama has a unique history that is different from the descendants of slaves, but he is part African. When African Americans embraced him and gave him huge majorities, conservatives took off of after black surrogates, such as Rev. Wright, his wife Michelle, and Jesse Jackson, who many whites would mistrust. And modern negative campaigning is about generating mistrust, particularly with the dominance of negative talking heads on cable tv and conservative talk radio. With that much negativity out there, how can anyone get ahead. And never underestimate the power that race has on politics in America. 4. Obama has hit with an additional constituency, young people and future oriented people who identify with the global economy. But people who feel they have no future, working class and whites threatened with unemployment, have not heard anything from Obama. 5. Obama is a new face. People are not into trusting politicians. He has no defining history as a legislator and no one is sure what his positions will be. Mostly he is a centrist, although conservatives have had some success telling people he is an extreme liberal. In addition people who expect Obama to agree with them have gotten disappointed, as Scheer has. Furthermore he has not really been a leader, or even much of a presence, opposing Bush's policies in the Congress. Howver, the Democrats who have do not have good poll numbers either. That bodes ill for Obama 6. The media, being a profit making arm of corporations, will only bless a pro-business candidate. It will certainly not want a Democrat to run off and get a mandate to redistribute income or power away from business. However, as with Clinton's election, corporate America is somewhat split on its direction as is evidenced both by their campaign contributions and media coverage. Plus the media wants a horse race or soap opera to keep us watching. Obama is entertaining and did a great job overseas. But bashing him is entertaining too.7. Obama must walk an incredible tightrope. He must raise big money to be credible, but he can't be seen as playing for pay. He must keep the high enthusiasm of blacks but not alienate whites who may in their hearts fear a black planet. He must be acceptable to the Jewish pro-Israel lobby but also offer hope of peace in the middle east, which requires new intiatives of fairness to both sides. He must offer an alternative to the abuses by the business sector that lead to Enron and the mortgage mess without sounding like Robert Scheer. He must appear capable of being tough and going to war if needed, not be a pacifist or wimp, but offer a clear alternative to Bush's war policy. He has been able to do it so far, but he will never be able to open a huge lead. If he succeeds, it will be close. 8. People compare Obama to Kennedy with his inspirational qualities. Kennedy barely won election at a time when Democrats had been the dominant party and today's various factions of conservatism were unheard of. Inspiration and change do not win huge majorities. If they did we would have been inspired and changed before.

Matt Miller pointed out how lucky Obama has been. The timing of the primaries were such that caucus states gave him early credibility, his home state's primary occured to push him ahead in public perception, the demographics of the Democrats in the South gave his African American supporters much more clout in states which he will probably lose in a general election, and the states that he did really badly in came so late that Hillary could not turn the superdelegates without destroying the party. On Obama's recent trip, not only did nothing bad happen, but Maliki's announcement that the US needs to leave Iraq undermined McCain's hundred years of occupation and Bush's hope for a long term Iraqi request for a US presence. Luck certainly matters (Reagan had it and Carter did not, for instance) but it can't be counted on and can change quickly (LBJ and Bush). The thing that would matter most in an Obama presidency are his appointments to create a wise, able and responsible administration, and how he would use this to make key policy decisions. These issues are either ignored or impossible to deal with in a media campaign which focuses on gaffes and bonding, but they are what did in Bush, who looked like he should have been better than he turned out to be. Perhaps LRC can try to deal with that in the upcoming months.

Obama is straddling the fine line between being being perceived as pro reform without coming across as being anti troops. This is why Kerry lost.

Hello Sarah. My apologies – I wasn’t being clear. I was not saying that Tony was a neocon.

For some reason, the rest of my post got cut off. The reason I'm not surprised is because for the last 40 years, Democrats have been in the White House for only 12 and those two presidents were southern moderates. A northern liberal like Obama hasn't won in almost 50 years (John Kennedy). Even though his current positions are as conservative as Bush's, McCain is perceived as a moderate war hero, and perception is more important than reality. Independent swing voters think highly of McCain, and at the end of the day I think they will vote for him because they are concerned that Obama is an elite liberal who will raise their taxes and McCain is more likely to protect them against terrorism. White middle class voters in the heartland won't vote for liberals because they think that liberals are soft on national defense and are only in favor of the very poor and minorities, not people like them. Plus, more people will vote against Obama because of his racial background than will vote for him for that reason. I want to make it clear, by the way, that it saddens me to say this and I hope that I am wrong!