Just 60 More Days

(Editorial cartoon by Kevin Siers / The Charlotte Observer (September 7, 2012) and featured at McClatchy DC. Click on image to enlarge and consider returning, please.)

Kevin Siers' cartoon expresses my opinion of President Obama's acceptance speech now that I've listened to most of it and read all the commentary I had to time to. What struck me most is how similar Obama and Bill Clinton are in so many respects. Both are superb orators, amazingly so. Both will have a crowd on their feet quicker than almost any other politician of my life time.

And those oratorical skills have the effect of, well, softening the parts of the message which they have to deliver without turning off their audience. People still adore Bill Clinton, even with his personal and political shortcomings as a Democrat, and I suspect we all have some affection at least for Barack Obama. Still, a close examination of what they each have said and what they have done does not match what the Democratic Party used to be about.

That should not come as any surprise. After all, both come from the DLC wing of the party, which, if you think about it, is more oriented towards business, not the working and poor people of this country. For example, Bill Clinton presided over welfare "reform" and wanted abortion to be "safe, legal and rare."

Barach Obama, in his Thursday speech, referenced Simpson-Bowles, which means Social Security and Medicare is still on the table. Both will cheerfully be jiggered to save money so that the Pentagon and their sweet deals with contractors can go on unmolested. Downsizing/outsourcing government functions will continue.

And what especially saddens me is that I will vote for Obama, because the alternative is so much worse.

I grieve for my country. I really grieve for my niece, nephews and their children and all the generations that follow mine. We at least had a taste of the dream.