How not to talk to progressives on the campaign trail.

Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic Party's nomination to run for president, and because this is a crucial election year it is only natural for Democrats to try to win over progressives -- especially the disaffected variety turned off by your candidate's hard right turns. If you plan to do this, choosing to ignore Obama's strategy of pandering to right-wing and bigot voters who'll never cast ballots for him, good for you. But there are a few tips you'll want to keep in mind as you venture forth.

• Whatever you do, don't threaten people with a McCain victory if they don't vote for Obama. For one thing, people don't like to be threatened; for another, if a voter isn't convinced that your candidate will govern any better than McCain, it's a fairly useless thing to do anyway. It's best if you avoid doing this altogether.

• Whatever you do, do NOT bash Ralph Nader or any third party candidate. Criticize if you will, but do NOT attack. The reason for this is that true progressives, while partisan in a broader ideological sense, are not so in terms of supporting specific political parties. More often than not, we vote for individual candidates who have the records to back up their rhetoric than we are to vote along party lines. If you must criticize Ralph Nader, focus on this argument: "it takes an organized political party to win power, starting from the ground and working up, and though I respect Ralph I don't think he's going about this the right way." Don't mention ego or stealing Democratic votes (ballots belong to no political party), even if that's what you think, because neither argument is true and it has a tendency to turn people off who might otherwise consider your candidate.

• Listen to what people's concerns. Remember, Obama is running as the pseudo-change candidate. Even if true progressives feel compelled to vote for him out of misguided notions of pragmatism, they still care about the issues that matter. Don't brush them off or try to convince them that once Obama is elected they needn't worry, because they have every reason to worry. Don't be condescending; listen to people.

• Finally, talk about the issues, know them by heart, and have solid responses to questions -- especially those coming from Nader or McKinney supporters. Obama MUST be able to address their concerns. If he can't, and if you can't, you're better off not bothering.

That's pretty much it. If you follow these steps, you might succeed in swaying a few progressives. If not, don't complain when you receive the proverbial cold shoulder.

I'm not buying it.

To read the Rude Pundit blow the Obamassiah in writing, only to complain about the senator's craven and cynical capitulation on FISA and telecomm immunity, is truly an exercise in tedium. I imagine it's like the Puritans back in the day, when they were hanging their neighbors on trumped up charges of witchcraft, whacking off on the witness stand with their left hands while using their right to accuse their fellow hypocrites; yeah, they're prudish and homicidal, but they're secretly into all sorts of kink, so they've just got to be cool. Never mind that they helped murder people with whom they shared cider at the last barn-raising.

First things first: you do NOT get to complain about Obama's capitulations and selling out of the left in this country while at the same time dissing the e-mails of any and all who tried to warn you about him as "pro-McCain voter suppression screeds." No, you insipidly stupid motherfucker -- to accuse people who tried to tell you what's what and who now boast having told you so once you realized how low a low-life Obama really is, of "doing the work of the Republicans," only to turn around and lament the loss of Fourth Amendment rights thanks to the candidate YOU so knowingly supported even as you ripped into the now-former candidate who ended up voting the correct way for a change, is beyond the pale.

YOU, Rudy McRuderton, having boasted so often as to border on the comical of how you supported Barack Obama and continue to do so -- all the while claiming, so dishonestly, that you knew what he was all along -- do not have the right to complain about this shit. YOU helped your fellow bitches in the corporate media and in the zealous, compliant Obama cult sites (such as Daily Kos) inflict this shit upon America. YOU blew off any and all criticism as helping John McCain, never mind that those of us who saw through the Obamassiah from the beginning gave plenty of solid information (such as articles from the Boston Globe). You do NOT get to accuse US of enabling John McCain or anyone else, you imbecile.

No, you're so full of bullshit, Rude Pundit, that it's gushing from your ears. Fewer and fewer people on the left are buying into the lie that you were anything other than just another moron inadvertently doing the work of the DLC throughout this entire campaign. Obama won't lose in November because of we who had the balls to call bullshit when it truly mattered; your boy will pull that one off all on his own, and deep down, you fucking know it.

So go ahead, boy; keep lying to yourself that you aren't in part responsible for the latest gutting of America. But you are THROUGH lying to the rest of us. We're just about done putting up with you assholes.

Second: Now that you've saddled us with the candidate YOU wanted, as opposed to one the country NEEDED, what are you going to do? You have no credibility at all when it comes to bashing third party and independent candidates for president. Not only that, you have ZERO credibility when it comes to pointing out how much "better" your guy is than that maniac, McCain -- Obama's spent every day since locking up the nomination that he is absolutely NO better, and in some critical ways is actually much worse. You KNOW this, or else you wouldn't be taking such unearned offense at the criticisms leveled at you from your readers (the ones you so cowardly accuse of working for that bloated-necked motherfucker).

So what's there for you to do, but one of two things? You can keep making yourself irrelevant, or you can redeem yourself by joining in the effort to force Obama to be what the left -- and the rest of the country -- needs him to be. Start urging people to back Nader, or Cynthia McKinney, or the write-in of their choice (whichever and whoever works), and tell Obama that if he wants to be president, this pandering to the far right ain't gonna make his ambition reality. Urge people to say, "fuck off, Dems," and support progressive candidates who have the records and actions to back up their fine talk.

Tell Obama to quit sucking corporate-conservative dick and do his fucking job. You helped him get it, you help make him do it. Until or unless you do that, neither I or the readers you so rudely wrote down to will buy into your bullshit anymore.

Obama's housing policy spells more of the same for inner city blacks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW12_OscRZg

The above video was posted in a news article on the web site for the Boston Globe newspaper. Few publications can be counted upon anymore to cover stories like this. Of those that do, fewer receive the attention they deserve -- at least until it's far too late to do anything about it. The Globe is one of them. In 2000 and 2004, the paper reported on the shrub's desertion from the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam war. As usual, the rest of the mainstream media buried it; it wasn't considered proper to accuse Glorious Dictator of being a shirker of military duty.

Today we have another candidate for dictator whose shady record has been largely buried by the blathering of the corporate media over trivial matters ranging from lapel pins to jumping all over a decorated general and former NATO commander for Europe who who dared suggest that merely having flown a plane during war time and gotten shot down doesn't qualify one to be president (in spite of the fact that it's true). How many signs shall be ignored that the guy who may very well become president only to continue the shrub's amoral and disastrous socio-economic policies is nothing but a phony playing us all for saps? Change? I've got twenty-five cents in my pocket. That's about all you'll be left with, if you're lucky, before Obama's done. That's assuming he doesn't blow the election for Democrats as did John Kerry and Al Gore before him. Right now it looks as though he's hellbent on doing just that with his sharp tack to the hard right.

This is completely unacceptable. It does America no good if we manage to defeat McCain and the Republicans only to end up with Democratic cowards and neocon enablers who just continue business as usual. The more Obama reveals himself as a pandering phony, the more disillusioned and pessimistic Americans become -- especially those who so foolishly and uncritically put their faith in him. What can we do to hold this opportunistic bastard accountable? Two words: Third Party. It's the only way we're going to make it clear to the powerful that we will no longer accept business as usual.

In the meantime, say a prayer this 4th of July for all those people doomed to decaying housing as a result of Obama's policies.