Writing shortly before the excitement that was Iowa, Taibbi comments:
With just weeks to go before Iowa, Obama is succeeding at that sales job, thanks in part to an unexpected avalanche of positive press and in even greater part to Hillary Clinton's recent performance as a creaky, suddenly vulnerable establishment villain. In just a few weeks, the first real votes in this insufferably long process will finally be cast, and when they are, the Powers That Be may find that they waited too long to get the real show started — that the long wait gave America just enough time to decide that it's ready to move on to something new.
For most of this campaign season, I doubted that Obama really was that new something. Now I'm not so sure he isn't. Whoever Barack Obama is, there's no doubting the genuineness of his phenomenon. And maybe, who knows, that's all that matters.
[...]
full at "Obama's Moment" published in Rolling Stone -
<http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/17652931/obamas_moment>
Interestingly, Taibbi provides a coherent version of the 'keep hope alive' posts some LBO'ers have submitted in response to unflattering critiques of Obama-mania.
Taibbi continues:
People hate the mechanized speeches, they hate the negative ads, and they especially hate venomous news creatures, myself included. It's now so bad that a poll last month found that fifty-six percent of all likely voters agreed with the phrase that the presidential race is "annoying and a waste of time" — a shocking number, given that it excludes the forty to fifty percent of Americans who already don't vote in presidential races.
People don't want to feel this way, but the attitude everywhere is the same: What choice do these assholes give us? And it's that grim prejudice that has pervaded this process for a generation, forcing the public to choose from an endless succession of lesser evils and second- raters of the Kerry-Dole genus, stuffed suits who offered nothing like a solution to the main problem of feeling like shit about the American civic experiment.
Until now. Emphasizing that this is not necessarily a reflection of who or what Obama really is, he unmistakably and strikingly attracts crowds that, to a person, really seem to believe that his election will fundamentally change the way they feel about their country.
[...]
All of which elegantly restates Wojtek's constipated old man grousing and Joanna's more gentle appeals.
But we're not done. Further on, the essay gets even more relevant to our debate:
[quote]
Normally the sight of prospective voters muttering platitudes about "hope" and "change" would make any reporter erupt with derisive laughter, but at Obama events one hears outbursts of optimism so desperate and artless that I can't help but check my cynical instinct. Grown men and women look up at you with puppy-dog eyes and all but beg you not to shit on their dreams. It's odd to say, but it's actually moving.
[end quote]
And on it continues. I suggest you read all of it. Taibbi smoothly touches upon what we might call the politically savvy (or reluctantly cynical) person's reason for supporting Obama: his candidacy is as much smoke and mirrors as the rest but *inspires* involvement and, by it's very nature, anti-racist feelings. This is all good so pipe down with the criticism already!
So now we see the two sides of the debate which will wage for as long as Obama remains "viable": should we give his candidacy the Glen Ford treatment? That is, should we look behind the curtain and reveal the shoddy workings? Or should we celebrate the fact that millions of Americans want to believe in "positive" and "progressive" politics again?
Note the similarities - an almost one to one parity at the meta level - to our discussions on religious faith. On the one side, those of us who insist that since there is no god creature, belief and hope in a better life based upon the god hypothesis is unprofitable for humanity. On the other side, those who say that faith gives hope and hope is necessary so shut up with your atheism and snark already!
Really, our back and forth re: Obama is practically the same argument, just sobered up and given a new suit!
.d.