Good thing the primary season was really about something instead of just buzzwords and personalities.
Update: Let the general election excitement begin!
If all goes as scripted, the Democrats hope to spend from now to November congratulating themselves on their ability to forge unity out of the seeming chaos of the excruciating primary election season, now thankfully over. "Unity" will join "change" as a meaningless buzzword in the vapid Democratic vocabulary. The fact is, corporate Democrats have been unified all along, joined at the hip in grim determination to ultimately plant themselves so microscopically to the left of the Republicans that the voters' choice will be just a matter of personality and individual taste. So, who do you like - Barack Obama or John McCain? At the end of the general election campaign, that's what it will boil down to for millions of voters, as the two corporate dancers draw ever closer together.
To be sure, there will be lots of manufactured drama, but very little of the action will have anything to do with policy, just as in the primary campaign. McCain's age will be a constant undercurrent, as will Obama's race. But the actual conduct of the war in Iraq, for example, and precisely when it is to be brought to an end, will be buried as the candidates battle over who loves "the troops" the most, and which standard bearer's personality is best suited to waging never-ending war on "terror."
Upperdate: I tend to toss off posts very quickly without explaining myself but I'll try and make a few points that I probably should have been clearer about.
First, in the Tom Frank column I link to above, Frank makes a point of saying that Obama has "allowed himself to be photographed" with a copy of Zakaria's The Post American World. What I take this to mean is that Obama's campaign intends to communicate the candidate's interest in Zakaria's dressed up version of global free market orthodoxy. Whether you wish to see this communication as subtle political posturing on Obama's part or as a true indication of his sympathies is up to you. But either way I don't find it particularly encouraging for similar reasons to those laid out by Frank in the column.
For Mr. Zakaria, the truly enlightened Americans, the ones who understand the coming order, are apparently Goldman Sachs, McKinsey & Company and assorted business chieftains. When Mr. Zakaria writes that Third World leaders "have heard Western CEOs explain where the future lies," he means it not as a sarcastic slap at those CEOs but as homage to their wisdom.
Second, I linked to that pro-Green commentary in order to once again point out that there are solid reasons for liberals/progressives to remain decidedly uninspired with the fact that after much juvenile wrangling, the two ruling parties have again nominated ideologically similar candidates for the highest throne in the empire. It's a point I expect to return to often as the election continues.
Having said that, it is curious that the commentary I linked to chooses the conduct of the war as a noteworthy issue upon which to build an observation of similarity between Obama and McCain. Had Hillary been the Democratic nominee, I would be fine with this point. But Obama, unlike Hillary, is clearly positioned to challenge McCain on the war from a relatively uncompromised place. What's more, it is probable that we can expect such challenges to be central to Obama's campaign. This, more than anything else, is the reason Obama has become the nominee.
While he may share many of the ideological flaws of most mainstream Democrats, Obama has not demonstrated that he shares in an equal measure of that party's characteristic political timidity. That alone may be enough to get him past the Cranky Old Man in November... but as Frank says, a better reading list couldn't hurt either.
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