Bara-calculus

Barack Obama is apparently miscalculating twice over by allowing the Hillary Clinton roll call and by giving the Clintons quality face time at the convention. This came essentially from the same people who declared his trips abroad to have been ultimately self-defeating.

These notions are reflective of a considerable degree of conservative wishful thinking.

What they should find more frightening is the possibility that Obama may be taking strategies from the Karl Rove playbook, and that they might work: first, by shoring up his base, and second, by actually campaigning as a “uniter” when he has no intention of governing as one.

He has been shoring up his base in two ways: first, by actually acknowledging the considerable historical import of the Clinton campaigns—Bill and Hillary both—without worrying that they might overshadow him. By giving them such floor time he links his campaign with the only Democratic success story of the past 40 years (the Carter administration emphatically does NOT figure in this equation). In other words, Yes [H]e Can, just Like They Did.

Additionally, by allowing even the idea that he didn’t get a majority of the popular vote to float about the convention floor, he gives credence to the notion that sometimes the electoral system does NOT always necessarily directly reflect the will of the people, and that just like W. won his office that way, the Democrats should acknowledge that they might need their own version of 2000 to win, and they should have no qualms about it.

His travels abroad actually had a similar effect. Europeans obviously can’t vote for him, and his immediate poll numbers may have suffered in the short-term. However, by playing to the multi- and internationalists back home, he demonstrated that he would govern with them primarily in mind, at least as far as foreign affairs are concerned.

Finally, despite some of his more recent “flip-flops” and ostensible moves to the center, Obama essentially remains an income-redistributing internationalist who intends to bring American socialism into the political mainstream the way Reagan brought solid conservatism into the mainstream, and then to the “permanent majority” so eagerly sought by the Rovian minions.

Generally, the Democrats’ attempts at tit-for-tat payback for the Republicans’ shenanigans during the Clinton years—from the “irrational” hatred of the sitting President to the impeachment threats—have not worked in their favor. This time they may actually succeed.

At the convention last night, Teddy Kennedy asserted that Obama would “close the book on old politics.” Kennedy couldn’t have been more wrong. Obama’s campaign may yet rewrite the book on “old politics”.