Negativity in the Presidential Elections

With the Democratic National Convention still months away, the negative campaigning of Hillary Clinton is threatening to derail any chance to displace the incumbent, inept Republican party.

How is it possible to popularize a party whose eight year rule has plunged the U.S. into a social, political and economic freefall? By distracting voters with petty ego-driven discourse, that is adding nothing and subtracting plenty. While Clinton pleads bold-faced innocence, the Karl Rove-types behind the scenes drag a race, that promised a much needed change from a clearly unsuccessful and unpopular presidency, into petty schoolyard name-calling and gossip-mongering. Clinton's scorched earth policy in Pennsylvania started with somewhat understandable, but overblown concerns about the inflammatory rhetoric of Rev. Wright but over the course of a few weeks degraded to the point that the free, and completely unsubstantiated association of Obama and Osama bin Laden was fair game. Surely their sound alike names are enough of a burden for Obama to carry. Why fan the flames? It is only turning off a U.S. public quickly fatiguing in the ultra marathon nomination process.

The Obama/Osama line came amidst a Clinton attack on the Foreign Policy/Security credentials of her challenger. Obama is a product of an international marriage, who spent much of his childhood in multicultural Hawaii and a predominantly Muslim Indonesia. How could he possibly have more understanding of the workings of societies outside of the U.S. than a the white-bread, Mid-western, debatably working-class Clinton? Surely you cannot be serious?

In most arenas, Clinton's doggedness and refusal to succumb to impending defeat is admirable. In the election of a Democratic candidate for an infinitely important Presidential race, it is creating nothing but a negative vacuum where once optimism and a quest to regain respectability for the office reigned supreme. Let's hope that Obama can escape the vacuum and triumph over this blight of negative campaigning.

TBR

the weight of having an opinion exist in electro-perpetuity is a heavy one.

Beunos Dias - Numero Uno

O.K. now that my Spanish has been exhausted I guess that I'd better outline the purpose for the existence of this corner of cyberspace. This page will be a forum for me to discuss my many barely informed and often indefensible opinions on all subjects ranging from the weather of the day to the weather of tomorrow and beyond. If I can ever escape from the exhilarating world of weather fluctuations I might hazard a post regarding, in no particular order: music, art, t.v., movies, politics, travel, ninjas and other trivial, yet to me, infinitely important topics.
Adios (a little Spanish left after all eh)
Cheers,
TBR