Obama and Huckabee, Off the Plantation

For seven years we’ve lived on the plantation, both in a racial sense, as well as politically. The rich (corporate wealth, defense conglomerates, private national security contractors) are in their big fine houses raking the fruits of our labor. Money rules the government. The government has turned into a cash cow for those willing to walk in with their hands out. Everything works as long as we stay “down on the farm,” “keep our heads down” and just “work our butts off.” Any dissent is disloyalty or treason, as in “you are doing great, be glad we’re rich or you wouldn’t have a job,” or “stay in line, be loyal, and don’t worry about a thing, you’re with us.”

Then came Obama and Huckabee. Now the election is about hope, charisma, and anti-partisanship. What they both lack in specifics regarding the issues, they more than make up for in a refreshing new political rhetoric. They are saying that it is the responsibility of government to work hard for “We the People” instead of servicing the plantation owners. It’s the opposite of the fear-mongering, strident, hard-nosed, completely partisan politics of the past seven years.

The scrambling has begun. Right wing pundits are squirming and starting to throw stones. Watch as the full-scale assault from the right-wing noise machine begins. Glenn Greenwald hits the nail on the head. He’s followed the right wing blogosphere for years and has found a thread that bears watching. From Jonah Goldberg at the National Review: (my emphasis)

Imagine the Democrats do rally around Obama. Imagine the media invests as heavily in him as I think we all know they will if he's the nominee — and then imagine he loses. I seriously think certain segments of American political life will become completely unhinged. I can imagine the fear of this social unraveling actually aiding Obama enormously in 2008. Forget Hillary's inevitability. Obama has a rendezvous with destiny, or so we will be told. And if he's denied it, teeth shall be gnashed, clothes rent and prices paid.

So it will be race riots if Obama teases us and loses? Or will it be riots like this? (Go to the link and check out #3). Who do you think the certain segments of society are? Who will become completely unhinged? Whose teeth are knashing, whose clothes rent and WHAT price will be paid? There are so many layers of paranoia and fear on display.

I have a feeling that the tactics the Republicans are guaranteed to use during the few months before elections will get me to vote Democrat. Just sitting around listening to people call Obama a “secret Muslim” or Hussein Obama like either of these things means he can’t run our country, makes me want to do everything I can to make sure the Republicans do not stand a chance to further ruin our country. - Ryan Hartman

Greenwald:

As Andrew White, who also posted that Free Republic piece, wrote: "If Obama continues and becomes the presumptive Democratic nominee (and his chances got a lot better last night) it is going to get ugly. Real ugly." It would be just as ugly with Clinton or Edwards as the nominee, but that's the point. Scare tactics and fear-mongering are all the Right knows, and their whole electoral strategy since Richard Nixon has been grounded in culturally tribalistic and racial appeals. The kind of subtle bile pouring forth from Limbaugh, and from Goldberg and Reynolds last night, is just a tiny preview of what is to come.

That this is basically a racially-based fear is obvious. More than that it’s the palpable fear of the rich, politically connected punditocracy, and the corporate benefactors of government largesse that is coming out in spades.

The only thing that can keep us “down on the plantation” is our fear of those in power. The right wing will hurl thunderbolts, rain down upon us with all the wrath they can muster. They fear the loss of empire, but more than that they fear the loss of POWER. Calling them out, identifying their fear, their racism, their hostility towards those who disagree is how both Obama and Huckabee will win the day.

The plantation owners are looking out at their vast estates and seeing trouble, my friends, trouble!