The Boomerang Candidate

One thing that rabid anti-Obama Hillshills like Taylor Marsh and Larry Johnson should realize (besides the fact that there’s more than one hair stylist in the world) is that Barack isn’t just another teflon candidate, he’s the first real Boomerang Candidate. If you hurl shit at him, you’ll find a landslide of it heading back in your direction and most of it won’t be coming directly from him. And that political phenomenon isn’t going away any time soon (including during the general election, if he makes it that far). The media, including several rightwing pundits I never in a million years would have imagined going puppy-eyed for someone as liberal as Obama, are in the tank for him, much more so than they are for St. Maverick, and unless he’s got a skyscraper-sized skeleton or two hiding his closet (which I doubt) or he pulls a Bill and starts wagging his finger at journalists (once again, which I doubt), there’s nothing that’s going to pry that boomerang effect away from him in ‘08. I’ve seen a lot of concern trolling directed at Obama and his followers indicating that we have no idea what the Republicans will throw at him in November. They proclaim that his love affair with the media will eventually wear off and they’ll go all Sweeney Todd on the Chosen One. It ain’t gonna happen.

Take South Carolina for example.  He was up against not one but two of the best political minds of our generation, both of whom were still juiced up from a surprise victory in New Hampshire and a strong level of support from Democrats, including myself, who thought the media was piling on Hillary a bit too much post-Iowa.  After a relatively quiet win in Nevada they strolled into South Carolina down in the polls but up to their necks in overconfidence.  They unleashed The Machine, an awesome and ugly thing, and went to work lowering expectations and trying to muddy up Obamamania with Rottwilliam Jefferson Clinton clumsily leading the charge. They thought they had teed it up perfectly; a loss for Barack would be a very bad loss and a win was ultimately a loss because all of his votes would have come from a swarthy swath of Brother and Sister Souljahs, clearly laying bare the inevitability of his ultimate doom on Supercalifragilistic Tuesday when whitey would rule the roost.

And then Obama beat the Clintons like a pair of mewling political simpletons in South Carolina.  He crushed them, blowing away Hillary by more than a 2:1 margin and leaving Bill looking like a post-beatdown Scut Farkus in A Christmas Story--a laughable, bloodied fool. And then Barack deftly orated all over their sorry asses in his victory speech, smothering both of them (and their entire operation) under a comforting blanket of change and hope and unity that was laced with some of the most inventive velvety venom ever unleashed in the political realm. It was expert gamesmanship and a definitive warning to everyone, pols and pundits alike, that Obama’s not some naïve flash-in-the-pan dreamboat who will be ground up by the vast right-wing conspiracy in the general election, but a savvy political player and a real threat in ’08.

He’s the Boomerang Candidate. Go ahead, fling it. I dare you. You’ll be sorry you did.

JUST IN: Toni Morrison, who famously dubbed Bill Clinton “the first black president,” is endorsing Obama today along with Ted Kennedy.

MORE: Not the greatest quality, but this is the first video of Big Teddy’s endorsement I could find.

Posted by Kevin K. on 01/28/08 at 09:29 AM • Permalink

Did Senator Clinton stuff Bill in a trunk and mail him to Arkansas? I haven’t heard a peep outta him since the ill-advised Jesse Jackson comment following the SC beat-down.

RE: Taylor Marsh, HillShill is right, and a positively delusional one at that. She has a long-winded post up (which she laughably describes as an “unbiased, cold assessment”—lol!) claiming that Obama would have supported the Iraq War if he had been in Congress at the time because JFK was a Cold War hawk, and since the daughter and brother of JFK support Obama and Obama inspires people like JFK did, this somehow means Obama would have authorized Bush to use force just like Hillary and Edwards. Had Obama not been out making anti-war speeches at the time instead, of course. Or some such nonsense. Jesus, what a self-referential, half-baked tool!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShXrM7kVoOU

I’ve been torn between the two of them for some time now (since my favorite candidate already dropped out). I didn’t like Hillary’s politics particularly, but I knew she was a rough player and that would come in handy. I wasn’t so sure about Obama’s politics, which seem sort of vague, and his conciliatory-sounding unity-language made me worry about him being another spineless candidate.

But the last few weeks, I think, have shown that Hillary’s operation is mean but dumb. I really resent her attempts to change the delegate rules after-the-fact and the fit she pitched in Nevada. And now I’m starting to hear people talk about what Obama has *done*, not what he talks about, and to me that’s more important. It’s one thing to take a rhetorical stand, it’s another to put yourself on the line for those issues. I am excited about an Obama candidacy.