Back to Work

Now that the kids have all gone home, it's time to begin the next round of choosing our President. This weekend, we all listened to the news of Barack Obama's ex-pastor's offensive remarks about America, and TV has recycled them nonstop since then. The Great Plotnik was watching with The Great PunkyDunky and the Great FiveHead on Friday night, and he said "Obama has two choices. He can quit, or he can rise to greatness. Here is his opportunity to lay it all out on the line and tell America what it needs to hear about race and class and inspiration. It's time for Obama to stand up. It's time for his Checkers speech."

Well, he did it. Plotnik just tried to load the link and he can't. So here is the URL: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0308/9100.html.

Plot and Duck know almost no one who actually voted for Obama except themselves, and it has been difficult at times for them to spell out why this man has touched them so deeply, flaws and warts and questionable land deals and angry pastors and all. It's all right here.

In a nutshell, Obama talks about black anger and about white resentment. And then he sums it up by saying:

"Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice..."

Not that we Californians can do anything about it anymore -- it's going to come down to Pennsylvanians. Plotnik lived in Pennsylvania. Clinton will once again try to whip up enough coded racial divisiveness to carry the day for herself and it shouldn't be too hard.

This doesn't mean Hillary Clinton is a bad candidate. She and McCain are doing what politicians have always done. But Plotnik would feel a lot more comforted to know he had a leader in the White House who knew not only how to count enough votes to win an election, but also understood what was going on out in the real world.