I will give you an indisputable example. John Kerry won Wisconsin in 2004 by one point. Russ Feingold voted against the Patriot Act, voted against nearly every measure that the Bush administration said was vital to protecting our national security and stood up for civil liberties when it was not in the least bit in vogue. The original Patriot Act vote was 99-1. Feingold was that 1.
Republicans said he was weak on national security, he endangered the country and cared about terrorists' rights. He won in Wisconsin in 2004 by 11 points.
Kerry won by a margin of 11,000 votes in that same year in that same state. Feingold won by a margin of 331,000 votes!
Yes, I know he was an incumbent, but so was Tom Daschle. The good people of Wisconsin voted for Feingold not because they thought he was weak on national security as the Republicans claimed but because they thought he was strong on principle. They were right.
This is the politics of strength. You stand firm. You punch the other guy in the face. You don't back down from a fight and you don't cede any ground.
If Obama doesn't learn to stand his ground and take some serious swings at his opponent, he -- and the rest of us -- will be sitting around on November 5th shaking our heads wondering what the hell happened. How could we have lost to these incompetetents? How could the American people have voted for these frauds and failures again? Well, that's because you never told them how much of a fraud and failure the Republican Party, George Bush and John McCain were!
Yes, I just called John McCain a fraud and a failure. He has switched his position on everything from tax cuts to immigration to torture. He has done this to appease the rabid Republican base. He is a fraud. He has supported the failing Bush policies of the last eight years lock, stock and barrel. He has aided and abetted Bush while he screwed up in Iraq, in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and in running our budget and our economy into the ground. John McCain is a miserable failure.
Can you imagine the Obama campaign saying any of this? That's right, you can't. And that's exactly why I'm afraid they are going to lose this election if they keep heading in this direction. I don't know if they know this, but they are running against McCain. He is their opponent. Their job is to defeat him. To beat him. To make him lose, and hence, become a loser.
This isn't some esoteric campaign of Barack Obama versus history. That's what the McCain camp wants. This is a real political fight between two real people. And until Obama realizes that and gets in the fight, he is not going to win. Take a swing, for the love of God. Show the American people you can be a man, a strong leader, someone who can knock an opponent down. This is an election dammit. Act like it.
cross posted from Dailykos.com
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