Many Kitchens to Cross

If Barack Obama makes it through what he's going through now he's going to be unfuckingstoppable in November. Everyone is throwing their kitchen sink at him now -- not only is he elitist-ly belittling the saccharine lies the likes of Clinton and McCain seem eager to thrust upon a populace rube-ified by twenty-eight years of Republican rule, he's a godless Commie (per the always-wrong smear-artist William Kristol and red-baiting Joe Lieberman) and, worst of all, per Rep. Geoff Davis (R-KY) he's not a man.

Oh, and he's uppity-I-mean-arrogant:

Oh now I get it.

Arrogance and elitists are fashionable code words. Growing up in the segregated South the word they used was Uppity which was usually followed by the N....word and applied to any black man who had the temerity to speak from authority. MLK, for instance, was uppity. MLK spoke truth with authority and power. Truth, power, and authority are dangerous notions especially in the head of an uppity black man.

Barack Obama is being uppity anytime he speaks an inconvenient truth. He stepped into a hornets nest when he reminded us that racism still exists and declined to renounce that piece of his soul. Now he’s being uppity when he reminds us that people are mad as hell about the government.

Here's an election watching hint. You'll always be able to tell just how uppity he is depending on how hysterical the counter attack is.

So what is this trial-by-fire revealing about the man who may be President?

He's a fighter:

The response was signature Obama: Attack first, sort out the details later, if at all. No apology, no immediate regret, just a sharp counterattack. For a candidate sometimes mocked for being too soft to win a political fistfight, he has shown an uncanny ability to take a punch and then rear back and deliver one in return.

When Obama responds this way, it leaves him open to charges that he's undermining his so-called politics of hope. But, showing remarkable dexterity, he has a knack for using these flare-ups to pivot back to the central theme of his candidacy: that politics is broken, and he knows how to change it.

Obama, it turns out, has been a devout observer of a philosophy future President Bill Clinton laid out in 1981.

"When someone is beating you over the head with a hammer, don't sit there and take it,” then-Gov. Clinton told Time magazine. “Take out a meat cleaver and cut off their hand.”

He can fight Hillary and John at the same time.

And they don't knock him off his fundamental game, which is that he keeps on telling the truth:

As a native-born, small-town Pennsylvanian, a son of native-born, small-town Pennsylvania parents - one from the coal region, one from Lancaster County - let me assure you that the so-called offensive, condescending things Barack Obama said about the people I come from are basically right on target.

"Bitter" perhaps best describes my late mother, an angry Irish Catholic who absolutely clung to her religion.

Dad, also a journalist, wasn't really bitter as far as I know, but he sure liked to hunt.

So, despite carping from Hillary Clinton and annoying yapping from her surrogates (really, it's like turning on the lights at night in a puppy farm), I take no offense.

What's offensive to me is suggesting that small-town, working-class, gun-toting and/or religious Pennsylvanians are somehow injured by a politician's words...

...So the question is whether Obama effectively defuses this, as he did the controversy surrounding his former minister. And that remains to be seen.

Just don't tell me that he insulted a state or, given his background, that he's an out-of-touch elitist.

And I especially don't want to hear such arguments from a candidate who spent decades in the bubble of a governor's mansion, the White House and the U.S. Senate, and under the blanket of $109 million income during the last eight years.

Pennsylvanians might cling to religion and guns. I hope they don't cling to stupidity.

From a reader blog at TPM Cafe, the core flaw in the Clinton campaign:

Truly, what I have seen, is that Hillary's campaign has been run, almost completely, on the basis of "Barack Obama is worse than I am, thus, I should be President", rather than "I am better than Barack, thus, I should be President". Please take a moment to think about this distinction, because I think it is a crucial one. I have realized that, instead of playing into her own merits, and why they are better than her rival, she has played into his shortcomings, and why they make him worse. This is a fatal issue, I believe, because Barack Obama has done the exact opposite. He has almost entirely, and very consistently, focused on what makes him better than her.

This entire issue over the word "bitter" has, for me, brought this into the open. Whereas Hillary could have left his statement for what it is, and left it after Barack explained what he meant, she instead decided to focus on why such a word is detrimental to him. Why, I ask, is it not possible for Hillary to win on her own merits? Why is it that she must clutch at straws in order to win? Why doesn't her own personality, her own policies and abilities, speak for themselves?

According to Bill Richardson, Hillary Clinton thinks that that Barack Obama can't beat John McCain in November?

Think again.



It all depends how he makes it through this thicket and I, for one, can't wait to see how he does it.