It's as If They're Trying to Lose: Democrats' Optimism Ignores the Struggles of Millions
by
Writing in 2008, months before the year's
presidential election, Ezra Klein — an ostensibly clear-headed,
data-driven policy wonk — lavished effusive praise upon Barack Obama,
praise that verged on the metaphysical.
"Obama's finest speeches do not
excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate,"
Klein informed readers
of The American Prospect. "He is not the Word made
flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. The other
great leaders I've heard guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at
his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where
America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants,
seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and
transcendence."
Though they so frequently congratulate
themselves for their ability to jettison emotion and opinion in the service of
objectivity and respectability, mainstream analysts often, as Klein did above,
forget their self-professed role precisely when it would best serve
the country.
For the eventual victory of Obama in 2008
was also — as Noam Chomsky, Adolph Reed,
and others noted at the time — a victory for the advertising industry: Obama's
success represented an astounding achievement for the politics of
imagery and personality, for a political message that provides a kind of blank
slate onto which voters can project their ideological preferences.
Read more at
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/08/01/its-if-theyre-trying-lose-democrats-optimism-ignores-struggles-millions
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