Obama's "Have You No Decency" Moment In Richmond, VA

This is a powerful speech that evokes the best of the 2004 DNC convention speech and also just makes the McCain campaign look small.



We've been waiting for someone to say this.

At a defining moment like this, we don't have the luxury of relying on the same political games, the same political tactics, that we've become accustomed to. This slash-and-burn politics that divides us from one another... which the challenges and crises we face right now, we can't afford to divide this country. By race, by class, by region, by who we are, by what policies we support. Let me tell you something, because I know you've been hearing a lot of stuff lately. There are no real parts of the country and fake parts of the country. There are no pro-America parts of the country and anti-America parts of the country. We all love this country. No matter where we live. Or where we come from.

The sad part is that this should be elemental. As much as the netroots is seen as a place for partisan warfare, there's no categorical desire for this to be so. We bring the necessary firepower to the battle. And so has Senator Obama. But the dishonest, dishonorable campaign of John McCain's simply deserves to be called out in this fashion. McCain seemingly has no understanding of the seriousness of the moment. He doesn't get what we are facing right now. And so he has made, in Obama's words, a big campaign about small things. And he has attempted to distract and obfuscate and all the other de rigeur elements of Republican political warfare. And it has rung completely false when we are fighting two failed wars and dealing with a protracted economic meltdown.

Black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, young, old, rich, poor, gay, straight, city dwellers, farm dwellers, it doesn't matter, we're all together [...] The men and women from Virginia and all across this country who serve on our battlefields. Some are Democrats, some are Republicans, some are independents. But they fought together, and bled together, and some of them died together under the same flag. They didn't serve a blue America, or a red America, they served the United States of America. Nobody should forget that.

There's also a part in there saying that those who supported the war or those who supported Republican policies are patriots. That may dismay some people. This is the "unity shtick," says Obama, and Republicans are fundamentally not interested in unity, and debate is healthy in the political sphere. And I agree with that. What I believe Obama is doing is making the fringes of the debate, what the McCain-Palin campaign have defined themselves as entirely these last few weeks, UNACCEPTABLE. Broadly unacceptable. We can disagree about issues, we can have our own views about how to pay for services or manage foreign policy or promote economic growth. But the questioning of patriotism, the denigrating of opponents as un-American, this is what cannot stand. And an Obama victory would seek to render illegitimate those kinds of attacks for good. It won't totally work, of course, but each generation must have its own "Have you no decency" moment, a moment that makes the screamers and the demonizers and the haters look small. Microscopic. It is a moment that marginalizes this kind of hate. It's the old man sputtering about "that kind" in Twelve Angry Men as the other jurors in the room look on in horror and recognition. It's the families watching television as hoses are sprayed into the bodies of civil rights workers in Alabama. It's Joseph Welch, the Secretary of the Army, looking into the face of Joe McCarthy and telling him what kind of a man he was.

This was a cheering moment amidst the sewer that into which the right is trying to turn this election. It puts the stakes of the election into the proper context.

I'm asking you to believe. Believe in yourselves, believe in each other, believe in the future we can build together.

Tweety Tricked Me!

If you get into an intellectual war of words with Chris Matthews, and you lose, that's a disqualifying event for public life. Michelle Bachmann is just such a loser.

Chris Matthews laid a trap, and I walked into it. […]

Chris Matthews was using the term over and over, and I should not have used it. […]

This was Chris Matthews. I made a big mistake by going on the show. I never should have. […]

I just didn’t recognize — I never watched the Chris Matthews show before. I should have before I went on. I didn’t recognize that he would lay a trap the way that he did.

He laid this trap by allowing you to say what you were saying instead of cutting you off. And by taping it.

The D-Trip has an ad on the air in the district now, hitting her CONTINUED love of deregulation and the Wall Street cash she's taken for her campaign. I'm a little befuddled why they're not hitting the McCarthyism, but maybe the free media is doing that job for them. The idea that "hyper-regulation" caused the crisis is nutty, too. I hear that the NRCC might not save her from this one.

Bye bye Bachmann.

UPDATE: And now, in friendlier media outlets, she's just rearranging the words.

BACHMANN: All I did on Chris Matthews is I questioned Chris Matthews and said, “look, if John McCain had friends like Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers and Father Pfleger, you’d be all over him Chris, but you’ve laid off of Barack Obama.” And so, he was using the word “Anti-American” and I told Chris, what I question are Barack Obama’s views. Because Barack Obama’s views are against America. They won’t be good for our country.

It's all so simple. All she did is say that Obama's views are against America. Now if that makes him anti-American, well, you must be one a' them liberal elitez.

Famous Last Words

Even I didn't expect the avalanche of cash raised mainly by the netroots for Elwyn Tinklenberg, the candidate running against neo-McCarthyite Michelle Bachmann in MN-06 after her disturbing comments on Hardball. Tinklenberg picked up nearly a half a million dollars in a matter of hours. Wow.

Meanwhile, Bachmann is denying what she said despite the existence of a little thing called videotape.

This morning, Bachmann tried to undo the damage. Appearing on WCCO (Minneapolis’ local CBS affiliate), Bachmann denied she ever called Barack Obama’s views “anti-American”:

HOST: You do feel his [Obama’s] views are anti-American?

BACHMANN: I feel his views are concerning. I’m calling on the media to investigate them. I’m not saying that his views are anti-American. That was a misreading of what I said. And so I don’t believe that’s my position. I’m calling on the media to take a look at what his views are [...]

That’s a lie. Here’s what Bachmann said on Hardball:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: So you believe that Barack Obama may have anti-American views?

BACHMANN: Absolutely. I’m very concerned he may have anti-American views.

It would be absolutely poetic to see Bachmann defeated.

UPDATE: The D-Trip is throwing down a million bucks, too. Way to nationalize your race, Michelle.

Like McCarthy, But Clumsy

If you put Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann together you still wouldn't add up to the stature of a Joe McCarthy, who was one of the lowest and most execrable figures ever to haunt the halls of Congress. Which tells you a lot about Palin and Bachmann.

Palin, who has now taken to using the Secret Service to cover up the hate rhetoric at her own rallies, went around today saying she was happy to visit the pro-American areas of the country (I don't think she was referring to my little patch of Santa Monica). In context, it looks worse. Apparently only small towns are pro-American. I guess that kind of spirit leads to pro-American behavior like assaulting journalists:

I sidled up to one of the Obama supporters and asked why they were there, what they were trying to accomplish.
As he was telling me a large, bearded man in full McCain-Palin campaign regalia got in his face to yell at him.

"Hey, hey, " I said. "I'm trying to interview him. Just a minute, okay? "

The man began to say something about how of course I was interviewing the Obama people when suddenly, from behind us, the sound of a pro-Obama rap song came blaring out of the windows of a dorm building. We all turned our heads to see Obama signs in the windows.

This was met with curses, screams and chants of "U.S.A" by McCain-Palin folks who crowded under the windows trying to drown it out and yell at the person playing the stereo.

It was a moment of levity in an otherwise very tense situation and so I let out a gentle chuckle and shook my head.

"Oh, you think that 's funny?! " the large bearded man said. His face was turning red. "Yeah, that 's real funny…" he said.

And then he kicked the back of leg, buckling my right knee and sending me sprawling onto the ground.

By the way, Joe Biden was perfect talking about this today: "It doesn't matter where you live, we all love this country, and I hope it gets through. We all love this country."

On Hardball today, Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) was asked about the "pro-American" quote and she essentially called for journalists to investigate all liberal members of Congress.



I associate myself with Katrina vanden Heuvel's remarks: "Chris, I fear for my country."



These people have touched off something very deep in a dark corner of the American psyche. They aren't just demonizing their fellow Americans, they are calling them into question. They are accusing them of treason. They are inciting. They are delegitimizing. They are summoning hatred and violence.

Palin will meet her fate in the Presidential election. But Bachmann and her neo-McCarthyism needs to be repudiated as well. Elwyn Tinklenberg isn't exactly my kind of Democrat (he's been endorsed by the Blue Dogs) but he isn't a vehicle for hatred and factionalism like Bachmann, a parrot for the basest elements of society. He's not that far behind in the polls, either. If you want to put an end to this, you can help out Tinklenberg here.