The White Racist Vote

via Bateseville, MS.

Amazing how similar it is to the Obama Kool-Aid vote.

Recently, Michael Chabon wrote in the Washington Post about people like me, people who refuse to be swept up by Obama mania. I wrote to him:

I suspect your point is that the only thing that will stop Obama from winning is if we don't allow ourselves to hope he can win. As a reader, as a writer, and as a voter, I am not at all convinced by this argument. It is significantly weaker than the one that says we should vote for the person who will fight hardest for victory. The last eight years of history have taught us what happens to gracious candidates who play by the rules and who take too long to hit back against the lies. Hope alone is not a winning strategy.

But more than anything else, it is Obama's disciples who most turn me off to Obama. We've had eight years of Jim Jones style presidency - I don't want to live through eight more years of the People's Temple in America, thanks.

Michael responded:

How sad that you equate feeling hope, pride, enthusiasm and a sense of possibility with the evil of Jonestown!

I responded:

Not all hope. Just hope founded solely on a cult of personality. The people of Jonestown hoped to build a better world, too.

He responded:

How dismissive and callous (and ill-informed) that "solely"!

To which I said:

Talk like a cultist and people will assume you're a cultist.

Get thee to a fainting couch! I am sad, dismissive, callous and ill-informed because I won't drink the Kool-Aid. And where, pray tell, did the whole Kool-Aid metaphor come from? Jonestown, of course.

My strongest dislike of Obama are the Obamaniacs who surround him. I always assumed that this was merely a side-effect of his charisma, but as I have often been told (and too often forget), nothing in politics happens by accident. I don't mind that Obama has charisma, and I only sort of mind that his charisma has a tendency to create cult-like behavior, but when there are indications that the campaign is actively cultivating cultist behavior, I have serious concerns.

Take this, for instance:

Mack wanted to drill home one of the campaign's key strategies: telling potential voters personal stories of political conversion.

She urged volunteers to hone their own stories of how they came to Obama – something they could compress into 30 seconds on the phone.

"Work on that, refine that, say it in the mirror," she said. "Get it down."

She told the volunteers that potential voters would no doubt confront them with policy questions. Mack's direction: Don't go there. Refer them to Obama's Web site, which includes enough material to sate any wonk.

This is no accident - it is campaign policy to avoid specifics and focus on the charisma, the personal stories of "coming to Obama."

Frankly, I'm just a little freaked out by this. The most dangerous thing about any cult of personality movement is that they are often fragile constructs, beautiful, soaring, manic things that seem boundless in what they can accomplish. Until reality intrudes and the personality is shown to be a shallow facade, and the personality begins to crumble in the harsh light of day. And when the personality crumbles, the movement crumbles spectacularly.

Since Tuesday, I have seen at least one article quoting Obama as saying that since he has taken on the Clinton machine, he should be able to handle the Republicans. Heaven help America if he thinks Bill Clinton's occassional rejoinders are the worst he's ever going to see. The Democratic primary is like intramural flag football compared to the Super Bowl of a general election.

First of all, he hasn't actually "taken on the machine," he hasn't beaten the Clintons, only gone up against them. When things have gotten marginally nasty, he has retreated crying foul and allowed the media to do all the piling on. Come the general election, he's not going to have the advantage of playing the refs. The media will turn on him at the slightest sign of weakness. They'll pick apart his every statement looking for anything that can be turned back on him, and if they can't find it, they'll just make it up - ask the Clintons.

Obama also says there's dirt yet to be uncovered about Hillary Clinton - please, she's the most investigated woman on this planet. If there were anything marginally damaging, it would already have come out. Unless it happened before 1998, and then who will care?

He says that the Clinton research operation is the best out there, intimating that if there were any skeletons in his closet, the Clintons would have exposed them. Again, please - he may be a primary opponent, but he's also a fellow Democrat. I think even Hillary Clinton would agree that it is more important that the office of the president be occupied by a Democrat than a Clinton. There are plenty of possible dirty secret scenarios that no Clinton would mention but the Republican machine would gladly hoist, no matter how thin. Matt Drudge rules the media world, after all, and a story about a Democrat doesn't have to be true so long as it has traction.

When I look at the Obama campaign, I am most bothered by three things: the apparent encouragement of cultish behavior among volunteers and supporters; the willingness of his campaign and supporters to recycle right-wing Hillary Hate talking points; and his level of support from a media we learned long ago never to trust. This last point should alarm anyone with a brain. Never trust the media or Republicans who offer advice about what the Democratic party should do.

But I am especially bothered by the tendency among Obamaniacs to turn any criticism of Obama into a character fault belonging solely to the critic (see Michael Chabon's response above). Chabon argues that irrational fear is what drives support to Clinton, and if only we are brave enough to dare to hope for something better, then Obama will win.

This, I predict, is where the Republican machine will destroy the Obama candidacy, should Obama be the nominee. It is where Obama's greatest strength lies, and it is where he is weakest. If they can portray his movement in cultish terms and make Obama supporters out as weirdo Hare Krishna wannabes, Obama's campaign will collapse and we'll be stuck with President McCain.

It would do well for Obama to dial back the cult now, while he still has a chance to do it. It might win him the nomination, but it'll become a liability in the general election.