It has been a long time since I have blogged about politics, mainly because it is still kind of painful for me to think about "what might have been" with Hillary as our presumptive nominee. Yes, I still have the "Out for Hillary" button on my blog and I still have my Hillary signs up on my balcony (though they are starting to look pretty ragged). However, make no mistake, when November rolls around, I'll be voting Democratic.
Even though I have not been paying the level of attention to the campaign as I was in the first part of the year, I like to think I'm staying reasonably informed, but I honestly began to feel yesterday the tug of losing that I felt with Gore and Kerry in 2000 and 2004. Yes, I know that the polls show Obama winning right now, and frankly, I think it will probably take a miracle for McCain to win (more on that in a minute), especially in light of Bob Barr being a pretty strong Libertarian candidate in the South. However, why am I feeling like Obama could tank? Is it still some sore loserness from the Primary? Maybe, but I like to think that I am being analytical here.
I have two reasons for this. The first is the most egregious one. Obama switched his view on amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which passed the Senate with his support yesterday. It's really just a fancy way of saying that the government is now going to wiretap us without judicial oversight and the telecom industry cannot be held accountable retroactively for allowing warrentless wiretapping post-9/11. I've been against these types of infringements on our civil liberties since the Patriot Act bubbled up after 9/11, and this is just the next step. Obama said in October that he would not support any bill or end any filibuster of said bill if it included any sort of retroactive immunity to the telecom industry, who basically broke the law to provide wiretapping to the Bush Administration. Well, it's interesting to see what becoming the presumptive nominee can do to your principles. He not only voted for cloture (to end the filibuster of Chris Dodd and Russ Feingold), but he also voted to pass the bill, which did provide retroactive immunity. Way to go Barack! You just pissed off the left. For the record, Hillary voted against cloture and against the amendments.
The second issue that is making me feel like Barack is sinking and could be the McCain Miracle is the situation in Iran. Israel is rattling their sabers, and Iran just test launched missiles that can hit Israel. If war breaks out between these two and we get sucked into it, do you really think the American public is going to want to vote for an untested Senator who's only major foreign policy stance is to get out of Iraq? Yeah, I thought not. Don't you think Hillary would have been more capable to handle this? Yes, I think so.
Things are not dire yet, but so help me Barack Obama, if you lose this thing, you had better just retire from the Senate and go back to "community organizing."
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