The Dish

The unique and unbitter talent of John Daker:

A blast from the past: Life magazine’s famous 1985 cover-story, "Now No One Is Safe from AIDS." Actually, lots of people (mainly white heterosexuals) were. And one of the "victims" on that cover is still alive.

In non-fiction, it’s what blogs are. In fiction, it keeps getting more interesting online.

Some reflections on some sun-glass reflections.

Obama takes her on. His defense of his own faith – that he and many others have indeed "clung to" at many points in our life – is a moving one – and I believe it is sincere. Hearing a public figure speak this frankly, this directly, and this passionately gives me hope. I don’t agree with Obama on everything. God knows that’s the truth. But he is already breaking the rules that have trapped us for so long and winning.

I’m not betting against him. You know why? He’s not afraid. And by jettisoning fear as the lodestar of liberalism, he is doing us all a favor, right and left. Man, he cheers me up:

He will be swift-boated in a nano-second by the right-wing "freak show" in the fall, argue VanDeHei and Harris. They say that’s something Clinton cannot say. But she has said it, basically. Everything she has done in this campaign is rooted in that premise. And she has no other argument at this point. Yet Obama keeps winning. Joe Klein responds here. He’s certainly right that the Clintons’ baggage remains much more than carry-on and hasn’t yet been inspected in full.

But the deeper truth, is this: If you assume that nothing much has changed in American politics since 2004, Harris and VanDeHei have a point. My guess is that they’re mistakenly if understandably inferring from the past, not accurately projecting the future.

But then, I’m one of those people who believe a) that this country’s problems are more severe than anything since the 1970s; and b) that people are sick of Morris-Rove politicking. Both are obviously arguable propositions, but the emergence of both McCain and Obama in this cycle seems to me to suggest that change actually is afoot. That’s why c) Obama’s sheer political talent needs to be taken into account as well. He’s much better than Gore or Kerry as a politician. And Clinton too. He has judged the public mood more successfully so far than any other Democrat or Republican – if you look at how many have voted for him and donated to him and caucused and volunteered for him. Is it all a fluke? A fairy-tale? I don’t know, of course, but I doubt it.

Some grounds for hope because there is room for disagreement.

A reader writes:

I’ve been thinking a lot about Obama’s comments and I fear they confirm much of what I’ve suspected about him from the very beginning: that he’s an opportunistic, heavily secular left liberal who looks disdainfully on "quaint" traditional American lifestyles. This, of course, is not a deal breaker for many people, but it is very disheartening to someone like me who has been trying his best to warm up to the idea of an Obama presidency, despite the fact that, as a Hayekian conservative/libertarian who values both freedom and religion, I’m horrified by his consistently leftist voting record. In other words, I’ve been trying my hardest to get to like Obama (and to reconcile myself with the view that we will have Democrats in the executive and legislative branches), and though I often disagree with you, I’ve been reading your blog for some glimmer of hope. (By the way, I do blame the GOP for its fall from grace; don’t get me wrong. And I don’t identify with the party.)

I don’t want to make the mistake of inaccurately characterizing Obama due to just these comments;

I’m also too much of an Aristotelian to think that one day’s good work could make a person virtuous or that some occasional crude remarks makes a person racist, sexist, vicious, and so on. But Obama’s comments speak to the Marxist legacy of the belief that transforming society materially will allow people to see their true interests and thus discard the yoke of customary morality and other aspects of false consciousness–religion, of course, being on top of that list. For those of us who see religion as a reflection of one’s submission to a moral authority regardless of one’s material conditions, Marx’s misunderstanding of religion is disturbing. But it’s precisely that misunderstanding that, in my view, has animated our nation’s history of progressive statism and which, in a similar form of reasoning, can also be found underlying the Iraqi invasion: it’s the secular messiahship that big government liberals and conservatives share, and, I’m beginning to think, it underlies Obama’s hubris.

This is not an argument for Clinton or McCain, of course, but I’m now heavily in favor of McCain. I at least want some balance of power between the executive branch and Congress and think McCain’s simply the only choice left, despite my many disagreements with him, too. But I just cannot be seduced by Obama’s rhetoric. I’m still surprised that you find hope in him. I just think he’s playing us all.

A voice from Allentown, Pennsylvania. Hat tip: Bittervoters.org.

"The politics of the Karl Rove era were designed to distract and divide the very people who would ordinarily be rebelling against the deterioration of their way of life. Working Americans have been repeatedly seduced at the polls by emotional issues such as the predictable mantra of "God, guns, gays, abortion and the flag" while their way of life shifted ineluctably beneath their feet," – senator Jim Webb, famous elitist.